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THE STILL HOUR 

OR 

COMMUNION WITH GOD 



BY 

AUSTIN PHELPS 

Professor in Andover Theological Seminary 



By all means, use sometimes to be alone. 

Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. 
Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own; 

And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. 

George Herbert. 



Mi 



BOSTON 



D LOTHROP COMPANY 
1893 



Lltfl 

The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright by 
D LOTHROP AND COMPANY 

1885 



Copyright by 
D LOTHROP COMPANY 
1893 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



Some subjects of religious meditation are 
always timely, and standard thoughts upon 
them the most timely. Such, it is hoped, 
will be found to be the character of the fol- 
lowing pages. 

A portion of them have been delivered as 
a sermon, in the Chapel of the Andover 
Theological Seminary, and several times else- 
where. Evidences of their usefulness in that 
form have been so obvious, that the author is 
induced to comply with the repeated requests 
which have reached him, that they should be 
given to the press. 

That they should be much enlarged in the 
course of revision for this purpose, is almost 
the necessary result of a review of a subject 
so prolific, and so vital to Christian hearts. 

Theological Seminary, 

Andover, Mass., Dec. 1859. 



PREFACE. 



The author of this volume has often been 
requested to enlarge it in a new edition. The 
Eev. Albert Barnes of Philadelphia once de- 
sired that it should be expanded into a com- 
plete treatise on Prayer. Such an expansion 
might augment its usefulness in some respects, 
but would sacrifice features on which that use- 
fulness thus far has largely depended. Its 
circulation in its original form has been so 
cheering, extending into six different lan- 
guages, and the author's correspondence has 
brought to him from all quarters of the globe 
such evidences of its good work, that he fears 



PREFACE. 



to disarrange it by a revision of it line by 
line. 

As the years have gone by it has come to 
be to him like the work of another mind. 
Under this condition he ventures to believe 
that there was a divine guidance in its original 
construction. He therefore only adds to it 
material which has grown of its early history. 

Andover Theological Seminary. 

Oct. 1, 1890. 



NOTE. 



The world-wide circulation of The Still 
Hour — which has been estimated at two 
hundred thousand — had already called for a 
new edition of this book before its author's 
summons to the Life and Health Everlasting. 

It need only be said that the Preface and 
new material added to the volume, received 
the final touches from the dying hand ; and 
that these were among the last cares which 
he gave to any earthly matter. 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 



CONTENTS. 



1 



I 

PAGE 

ABSENCE OF GOD, IN PRAYER, . . . . . 7 
II. 

UNHALLOWED PRAYER, .16 
III. 

ROMANCE IN PRAYER, 22 
IV. 

DISTRUST IN PRAYER, . ... 35 

V 

FAITH IN PRAYER, . b 42 

VI. 

SPECIFIC AND INTENSE PRAYER, .... 49 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



VII. 

PAGE 

TEMPERAMENT OF PRAYER, 58 

VTII. 

INDOLENCE IN PRAYER, 64 

IX. 

IDOLATRY IN PRAYER, 76 

X. 

CONTINUANCE IN PRAYER, 86 

XI. 

FRAGMENTARY PRAYER, 95 

XII. 

AID OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN PRAYER, . 108 
XIII. 

REALITY OF CHRIST IN PRAYER, ... 120 
XIV. 

MODERN HABITS OF PRAYER, . 130 

XV. 

FAITH ........ 137 



THE STILL HOUR. 



i 

OH THAT I KNEW WHERE I MIGHT FIND HIM ! 

Job 23 : 3. 

6 If God had not said, " Blessed are 
those that hunger," I know not what could 
keep weak Christians from sinking in de- 
spair. Many times, all I can do is to com- 
plain that I want Him, and wish to recover 
Him.' 

Bishop Hall, in uttering this lament, two 
centuries and a half ago, only echoed the 
wail which had come down, through living 
hearts, from the patriarch, whose story is 
the oldest known literature in any lan- 
guage. A consciousness of the absence 



8 



THE STILL HOUR. 



of God is one of the standing incidents 
of religious life. Even when the forms 
of devotion are observed conscientiously, 
the sense of the presence of God, as an 
invisible Friend, whose society is a joy, is 
by no means unintermittent. 

The truth of this will not be questioned 
by one who is familiar with those phases of 
religious experience which are so often the 
burden of Christian confession. In no sin- 
gle feature of 6 inner life,' probably, is the 
experience of many minds less satisfactory 
to them than in this. They seem to them- 
selves, in prayer, to have little, if any, 
effluent emotion. They can speak of little 
in their devotional life that seems to them 
like life ; of little that appears like the 
communion of a living soul with a living 
God. Are there not many 6 closet hours,' 
in which the chief feeling of the worshipper 
is an oppressed consciousness of the absence 
of reality from his own exercises ? He has 



PAYSON. 



9 



no words which are, as George Herbert 
says, 6 heart deep.' He not only experi- 
ences no ecstasy, but no joy, no peace, no 
repose. He has no sense of being at home 
with God. The stillness of the hour is the 
stillness of a dead calm at sea. The heart 
rocks monotonously on the surface of the 
great thoughts of God, of Christ, of Eter- 
nity, of Heaven — 

' As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean/ 

Such experiences in prayer are often 
startling in the contrast with those of cer- 
tain Christians, whose communion with 
God, as the hints of it are recorded in their 
biographies, seems to realize, in actual be- 
ing, the scriptural conception of a life which 
is hid with Christ in God. 

We read of Payson, that his mind, at 
times, almost lost its sense of the externa] 
world, in the ineffable thoughts of God'a 



10 



THE STILL HOUR. 



glory, which rolled like a sea of light 
around him, at the throne of grace. 

We read of Cowper, that, in one of the 
few lucid hours of his religious life, such 
^as the experience of God's presence which 
/ie enjoyed in prayer, that, as he tells us, 
he thought he should have died with joy, if 
special strength had not been imparted to 
him to bear the disclosure. 

We read of one of the Tennents, that on 
one occasion, when he was engaged in secret 
devotion, so overpowering was the revela- 
tion of God which opened upon his soul, 
and with augmenting intensity of effulgence 
as he prayed, that at length he recoiled from 
the intolerable joy as from a pain, and be- 
sought God to withhold from him further 
manifestations of his glory. He said, ' Shall 
Thy servant see Thee and live ? ' 

We read of the 'sweet hours' which 
Edwards enjoyed 4 on the banks of Hud- 
son's River, in secret converse witli God,' 



EDWARDS. 



11 



and hear his own description of the inward 
sense of Christ which at times came into 
his heart, and which he 4 knows not how to 
express otherwise than by a calm, sweet 
abstraction of soul from all the concerns 
of this world ; and sometimes a kind of 
vision * * * * of being alone in the 
mountains, or some solitary wilderness, 
far from all mankind, sweetly conversing 
with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in 
God.' 

We read of such instances of the fruits 
of prayer, in the blessedness of the suppli- 
ant, and are we not reminded by them of 
the transfiguration of our Lord, of whom 
we read, ' As he prayed, the fashion of his 
countenance was altered, and his raiment 
was white and glistering?' Who of us 
is not oporessed by the contrast between 
such an experience and his own? Does not 
the cry of the patriarch come unbidden to 



12 



THE STILL HOUR. 



our lips, ' Oh that I knew where I might 
find Him'? 

Much of even the ordinary language of 
Christians, respecting the joy of communion 
with God, — language which is stereotyped 
in our dialect of prayer, — many cannot 
honestly apply to the history of their own 
minds. A calm, fearless self-examination 
finds no counterpart to it in anything they 
have ever known. In the view of an honest 
conscience, it is not the vernacular speech 
of their experience. As compared with the 
joy which such language indicates, prayer 
is, in all that they know of it, a dull duty. 
Perhaps the characteristic of the feelings of 
many about it is expressed in the single fact, 
that it is to them a duty as distinct from a 
privilege. It is a duty which, they cannot 
deny., is often uninviting, even irksome. 

If some of us should attempt to define the 
advantage we derive from a performance 
of the duty, we might be surprised, per- 



COWPER. 



13 



haps shocked, as one after another of the 
folds of a deceived heart should be taken 
off, at the discovery of the littleness of the 
residuum, in an honest judgment of our- 
selves. Why did we pray this morning ? 
Do we often derive any other profit from 
prayer, than that of satisfying convictions 
of conscience, of which we could not rid 
ourselves if we wished to do so, and which 
will not permit us to be at ease with our- 
selves, if all forms of prayer are abandoned ? 
Perhaps even so slight a thing as the pain 
of resistance to the momentum of a habit, 
will be found to be the most distinct reason 
we can honestly give for having prayed yes- 
terday or to-day. 

There may be periods, also, when the 
experiences of the closet enable some of us 
to understand that maniacal cry of Cowper, 
when his friends requested him to prepare 
some hymns for the Olney Collection. 
' How can you ask of me such a service ? 



14 



THE STILL HOUR. 



I seem to myself to be banished to a re- 
moteness from God's presence, in compari- 
son with which the distance from East to 
West is vicinity, is cohesion.' 

If such language is too strong to be truth- 
ful to the common experience of the class 
of professing Christians to which those 
whom it represents belong, many will still 
discern in it, as an expression of joylessness 
in prayer, a sufficient approximation to their 
own experience, to awaken interest in some 
thoughts upon the causes of a want of 

ENJOYMENT IN PRAYER. 

The evil of such an experience in prayer, 
is too obvious to need illustration. If any 
light can be thrown upon the causes of it, 
there is no man living, whatever may be his 
religious state, who has not an interest in 
making it the theme of inquiry. 6 Never 
any more wonder,' says an old writer, ' that 
men pray so seldom. For there are very 
few that feel the relish, and are enticed with 



THE STILL HOUR. 



15 



the deliciousness, and refreshed with the com- 
forts, and acquainted with the secrets, of a 
holy prayer.' Yet, who is it that has said, 
6 I will make them joyful in my house of 
prayer' ? 



II. 



WHAT IS THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE ? WILL GOD 
HEAR HIS CRY ? — Job 27: 8, 9. 

Ax impenitent sinner never prays. In an 
inquiry after the causes of joylessness in the 
forms of prayer, the very first which meets 
us, in some instances, is the absence of piety. 
It is useless to search behind or beneath 
such a cause as this for a more recondite 
explanation of the evil. This is, doubtless, 
often all the interpretation that can be hon- 
estly given to a man's experience in address- 
ing God. Other reasons for the lifelessness 
of his soul in prayer are rooted in this, — 
that he is not a Christian. 

If the heart is not right with God, enjoy- 
ment of communion with God is impossible. 



CONCEALMENT OF GOD. 



17 



That communion itself is impossible. I 
repeat, an impenitent sinner never prays. 
Impenitence involves not one of the ele- 
ments of a spirit of prayer. Holy desire, 
holy love, holy fear, holy trust — not one 
of these can the sinner find within himself. 
He has, therefore, none of that artless spon- 
taneity, in calling upon God, which David 
exhibited when he said, ' Thy servant hath 
found in his heart to pray this prayer unto 
thee.' An impenitent sinner finds no such 
thing in his heart. He finds there no intel- 
ligent wish to enjoy God's friendship. The 
whole atmosphere of prayer, therefore, is 
foreign to his tastes. If he drives himself 
into it for a time, by forcing upon his soul 
the forms of devotion, he cannot stay there. 
He is like one gasping in a vacuum. 

One of the most impressive mysteries of 
the condition of man on this earth, is his 
deprivation of all visible and audible repre- 
sentations of God. We seem to be living 

2 



18 



THE STILL HOUR. 



in a state of seclusion from the rest of 
the universe, and from that peculiar pres- 
ence of God in which angels dwell, and in 
which departed saints serve Him day and 
night. We do not see Him in the fire ; we 
do not hear Him in the wind ; we do not 
feel Him in the darkness. But a more 
awful concealment of God from the unre- 
generate soul exists by the very law of an 
unregenerate state. The eye of such a soul 
is closed even upon the spiritual manifesta- 
tions of God, in all but their retributive 
aspects. These are all that it feels. These 
are all the thoughts of God which it has 
faith in. Such a soul does not enjoy God, 
for it does not see God with an eye of faith 
— that is, as a living God, living close to 
itself, and in vital relations to its own des- 
tiny — except as a retributive Power. 

The only thing that forbids life, in any of 
its experiences, to be a life of retribution to 
an impenitent sinner, is a dead sleep of 



BEAD SLEEP IN SIN. 



19 



moral sensibility. And this sleep cannot be 
disturbed while he remains impenitent, oth- 
erwise than by disclosures of God as a con- 
suming fire. His experience, therefore, in 
the forms of devotion, while he abides in 
impenitence, can only vibrate between the 
extremes of weariness and of terror. Quell 
his fear of God, and prayer becomes irk- 
some ; stimulate his indifference to God, 
and prayer becomes a torment. 

The notes of a flute are sometimes a tor- 
ture to the ears of idiots, like the blare of a 
trumpet. The reason has been conjectured 
to be, that melodious sound unlocks the 
tomb of idiotic mind by the suggestion of 
conceptions, dim, but startling, like a reve- 
lation of a higher life, with which that 
mind has certain crushed affinities, but with 
which it feels no willing sympathy : so that 
its own degradation, disclosed to it by the 
contrast, is seated upon the consciousness 
of idiocy like a nightmare. Such a stimu- 



20 



THE STILL HOUR. 



lant only to suffering, may the form of 
prayer be in the experience of sin. Im- 
penitent prayer can only grovel in stagnant 
sensibility, or agonize in remorseful tor- 
ture, or oscillate from one to the other. 
There is no point of joy between to which 
it can gravitate, and there rest. 

It is not wise that even we, who profess to 
be followers of Christ, should close our eyes 
to this truth, that the uniform absence of 
joy in prayer is one of the threatening signs 
in respect of our religious state. It is one 
of the legitimate intimations of that es- 
trangement from God, which sin induces 
in one who has not experienced God's re- 
newing grace. A searching of ourselves 
with an honest desire to know the truth, 
and the whole of it, may disclose to us 
other kindred facts, with which this feature 
of our condition becomes reasonable evi- 
dence, which it will be the loss of our 
souls to neglect, that we are self-deluded 



THE STILL HOUR. 



21 



in our Christian hope. An apostle might 
number us among the 'many/ of whom 
he would say, c I now tell you, even weep- 
ings that they are enemies of the cross of 
Christ.' 



III. 



IT I REGARD INIQUITY IX MY HEART. THE LORD 
WILL NOT HEAR ME — Ps. 66: 18. 

We often affront God by offering prayers 
which we are not willing to have answered. 
Theoretical piety is never more deceptive 
than in acts of devotion. We pray for 
blessings which we know to be accordant 
with God's will, and we persuade ourselves 
that we desire those blessings. In the ab- 
stract, we do desire them. A sane mind 
must be far gone in sympathy with devils, 
if it can help desiring all virtue in the 
abstract. 

The dialect of prayer established in Chris- 
tian usage, wins our trust ; we sympathize 
with its theoretical significance ; we find 



ROMANCE IN PRAYER. 



23 



no fault with its intensity of spiritual life. 
It commends itself to our conscience and 
good sense, as being what the phraseology of 
devout affection should be. Ancient forms 
of prayer are beautiful exceedingly. Their 
hallowed associations fascinate us like old 
songs. In certain imaginative moods, we 
fall into delicious reverie over them. Yet 
down deep in our heart of hearts, we may 
detect more of poetry than of piety in this 
fashion of joy. We are troubled, therefore, 
and our countenance is changed. 

Many of the prime objects of prayer 
enchant us only in the distance. Brought 
near to us, and in concrete forms, and 
made to grow lifelike in our conceptions, 
they very sensibly abate the pulse of our 
longing to possess them, because we cannot 
but discover that, to realize them in our 
lives, certain other darling objects must be 
sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to 
part with. The paradox is true to the life, 



24 THE STILL HOUR. 

that a man may even fear an answer to his 
prayers. 

A very good devotee may be a very dis- 
honest suppliant. When he leaves the 
height of meditative abstraction, and. as 
we very significantly say in our Saxon 
phrase, comes to himself, he may find that 
his true character, his real self, is that of no 
petitioner at all. His devotions have been 
dramatic- The sublimities of the closet 
have been but illusions. He has been 
acting a pantomime. He has not really 
desired that God would give heed to him. 
for any other purpose than to give him an 
hour of pleasurable devotional excitement. 
That his objects of prayer should actually 
be inwrought into his character, and should 
live in his own consciousness, is by no means 
the tiling he has been thinking of, and is 
the last thing he is ready just now to wish 
for. If he has a Christian heart buried up 
anywhere beneath this heap of pietism, ii 



ENVIOUS DEVOTION. 



25 



is' very probable that the discovery of the 
burlesque of prayer of which he has been 
guilty, will transform his fit of romance 
into some sort of hypochondriacal suffer- 
ing. Despondency is the natural offspring 
of theatrical devotion. 

Let us observe this paradox of Christian 
life in two or three illustrations. 

An envious Christian — we must tolerate 
the contradiction : to be true to the facts of 
life, we must join strange opposites — an 
envious Christian prays, with becoming de- 
voutness, that God will impart to him a gen- 
erous, loving spirit, and a conscience void 
of offence to all men. His mind is in a sol- 
emn state, his heart is not insensible to the 
beauty of the virtues which he seeks. His 
posture is lowly, his tones sincere, and self- 
delusion is one of those processes of weak- 
ness which are facilitated by the deception 
of bodily habitude. His prayer goes on 
glibly, till conscience grows impatient, and 



26 



THE STILL HOUR. 



reminds him of certain of his equals, whose 
prosperity stirs up within him that ' envy 
which is the rottenness of the bones.' 

What then ? Very probably, he quits that 
subject of prayer, and passes to another, ou 
which his conscience is not so eagle-eyed. 
But after that glimpse of a hidden sin, how 
do the clouds of estrangement from God 
seem to shut him in, dark and damp and 
chill, and his prayer become like a dismal 
pattering of rain ! 

An ambitious Christian prays that God 
will bestow upon him a humble spirit. He 
volunteers to take a low place, because of 
his unworthiness. He asks that he may be 
delivered from pride and self-seeking. He 
repeats the prayer of the publican, and the 
benediction upon the poor in spirit. The 
whole group of the virtues kindred to hu- 
mility, seems to him as radiant as the 
Graces with loveliness. He is sensible of 
no check in the fluency of his emotions, till 



UNFORGIVING PRAYER. 



27 



Ms conscience, too, becomes angry, and 
dashes the little eddy of goodness which 
is just now covering up the undertow of 
selfishness that imperils his soul. If then 
he is not melted into tears at the disclosure 
of his heartlessness, that prayer probably 
ends in a clouded brow, and a feverish, 
querulous self-conflict. 

A revengeful Christian prays that he may 
have a meek spirit ; that he may be harm- 
less as doves ; that the synonymous graces 
of forbearance, long-suffering, patience, may 
adorn his life ; that he may put away bitter- 
ness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, 
and evil-speaking, with all malice ; that 
that mind may be found in him which was 
also in Christ. At the moment of this de- 
votional episode in his experience, he feels, 
as Rousseau did, the abstract grandeur of a 
magnanimity like that of Jesus. There is 
no doubt about the fervor of his theoretic 
love of such an ideal of character ; and he 



28 



THE STILL HOUR. 



is about to take courage from his rapture^ 
when his conscience becomes impertinent, 
and mocks him, by thrusting upon his lips 
the words which are death to his conceit — 
' Forgive me as I forgive.' If then he is 
not shocked into self-abhorrence at the 
ghastliness of his guilt, he probably ex- 
hausts that hour of prayer in palliations 
and compromises, or in reckless impositions 
upon the forbearance of God. 

A luxurious Christian prays, in the good 
set phrases of devotion, for a spirit of self- 
denial : that he may endure hardness as a 
good soldier of Christ ; that he may take 
up the cross and follow Christ ; that he 
may be ready to forsake all that he hath, 
and be Christ's disciple ; that he may not 
live unto himself; that he may imitate 
Him who went about doing good, — who 
became poor that we might be rich, and 
who wept over lost souls. In such a prayer 
there may be, consciously, no insincerity, 



EFFEMINATE PRAYER. 



29 



but a pleasurable sympathy, rather, with the 
grand thoughts and the grander feeling 
which the language portrays. The heart 
is buoyant with its gaseous distension to 
the bounds of its great swelling words. 

This lover of the pride of life does not 
discover his self-inflation, till conscience 
pricks him with such goads as these : 6 Are 
you living for the things you are praying 
for ? ' — ' What one thing are you doing for 
Christ which costs you self-denial V — 6 Are 
you seeking for opportunities to deny your- 
self, to save souls V — 4 Are you willing to 
be like Him who had not where to lay his 
head V — ' Can ye be baptized with the bap- 
tism that He is baptized with ? ' If then this 
effeminate one is not roused to a more 
Christ-like life by the uncovering of his 
hypocrisy, what a sickly murmuring of 
self-reproach fills his heart at the collapse 
of that prayer ! 

Such is human nature ; such, but by the 



30 



THE STILL HOUR. 



grace of God, are we all. We must be dull 
inspectors of our own hearts, if we have 
never discerned there, lurking beneath the 
level at which sin breaks out into overt 
crime, some single offence — an offence 
of feeling, an offence of habit in thought, 
which for a time has spread its infection 
over the whole character of our devotions. 
We have been self-convicted of falsehood in 
prayer ; for, though praying in the full 
dress of sound words, we did not desire 
that our supplications should be heard at 
the expense of that one idol. 

Perhaps that single sin has woven itself 
like a web over large spaces of our life. 
It may have run like a shuttle to and fro in 
the texture of some plan of life, on which 
our conscience has not glared fiercely as 
upon a crime, because the usage of the 
world has blindfolded conscience by the 
respectability of such sin. Yet it has been 
all the while tightening its folds around us, 



DEJECTION NO MYSTERY. 



31 



repressing our liberty in prayer, stopping 
the life-blood and stiffening the fibre of 
our moral being, till we are like kneeling 
corpses in our worship. 

That is a deceptive notion which attrib- 
utes the want of unction in prayer to an 
arbitrary, or even inexplicable, withdraw- 
ment of God from the soul. Aside from 
the operation of physical causes, where is 
the warrant, in reason or revelation, for 
ascribing joylessness in prayer to any other 
cause than some wrong in the soul itself? 
What says an old prophet ? 6 Behold, the 
Lord's ear is not heavy that it cannot hear. 
But your iniquities have separated between 
you and your God. Your sins have hid his 
face from you. Therefore, we wait for light, 
but behold obscurity ; for brightness, but 
we walk in darkness. We grope for the 
wall like the blind; we grope, as if we 
had no eyes ; we stumble at noonday as in 
the night; we are in desolate places, as 



32 



THE STILL HOUR. 



dead men.' Could words describe more 
truthfully, or explain more philosophically, 
that phenomenon of religious experience 
which we call the < hiding of God's counte- 
nance ? ' 

It does not require what the world pro- 
nounces a great sin, to break up the seren- 
ity of the soul in its devotional hours. The 
experience of prayer has delicate complica- 
tions. A little thing, secreted there, may 
dislocate its mechanism and arrest its move- 
ment. The spirit of prayer is to the soul 
what the eye is to the body, — the eye, so 
limpid in its nature, of such fine finish and 
such intricate convolution in its structure, 
and of so sensitive nerve, that the point of 
a needle may excruciate it, and make it 
weep itself away. 

Even a doubtful principle of life, har- 
bored in the heart, is perilous to the peace- 
fulness of devotion. May not many of us 
find the cause of our joylessness in prayer, 



SUSPENSE OF CONSCIENCE. 33 

in the fact that we are living upon some 
unsettled principles of conduct ? We are 
assuming the rectitude of courses of life, 
with which we are not ourselves honestly 
satisfied. I apprehend that there is very 
much of suspense of conscience among 
Christians upon subjects of practical life, 
on which there is no suspense of action. 
Is there not a pretty large cloud-land cov- 
ered by the usages of Christian society ? 
And may not some of us find there the sin 
which infects our devotions with nauseous 
incense ? 

Possibly our hearts are shockingly de- 
ceitful in such iniquity. Are we strangers 
to an experience like this — that when we 
mourn over our cold prayers as a misfor- 
tune, we evade a search of that disputed 
territory for the cause of them, through fear 
that we shall find it there, and we struggle 
to satisfy ourselves with an increase of spir- 
itual duties which shall cost us no sacrifice ? 

3 



34 



THE STILL HOUR. 



Are we never sensible of resisting the hints 
which the Holy Spirit gives us in parables, 
by refusing to look that way for the secret of 
our deadness — saying, 6 Xot that! Oh no, 
not that ! But let us pray more ' ? 

Many a doubtful principle in a Christian 
mind, if once set in the focus of a con- 
science illumined by the Holy Spirit, would 
resolve itself into a sin, for which that 
Christian would turn and look up guiltily 
to the Master, and then go out and weep 
bitterly. 



IV. 



WHAT PROFIT SHOULD WE HAVE IF WE PRAY UNTO 
HIM ? — Job 21 : 15, 

The great majority of us have little faith 
in prayer. This is one of those causes which 
may produce a habit of mind in devotion , 
resembling that of impenitent prayer, and 
yet distinguishable from it, and coexistent, 
often, with some degree of genuine piety. 
Christians often have little faith in prayer 
as a power in real life. They do not em- 
brace cordially, in feeling as well as in the- 
ory, the truth which underlies the entire 
scriptural conception and illustration of 
prayer, that it is literally, actually, posi- 
tively, effectually, a means of power. 

Singular as it may appear, the fact is 
indisputable, that Christian practice is often 



THE STILL HOUR. 



at a discount by the side of heathen habits 
of devotion. Heathen prayer, whatever 
else it is or is not, is a reality in the 
heathen idea. A pagan suppliant has faith 
in prayer, as he understands it. Grovelling 
as his notion of it is, such as it is he means 
it. He trusts it as an instrument of power. 
He expects to accomplish something by 
praying. 

When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Nor- 
thumberland, invaded Wales, and was about 
to give battle to the Britons, he observed 
near the enemy a host of unarmed men. 
He inquired who they were, and what they 
were doing. He was told that they were 
monks of Bangor, praying for the success 
of their countrymen. 6 Then,' said the 
heathen prince, £ they have begun the fight 
against us ; attack them^r^.' 

So any unperverted mind will conceive 
of the scriptural idea of prayer, as that of 
one of the most downright, sturdy realities 



PRAYER A POWER. 



37 



in the universe. Right in the heart of 
God's plan of government it is lodged a^ 
a power. Amidst the conflicts which are 
going on in the evolution of that plan, it 
stands as a power. Into all the intricacies 
of Divine working and the mysteries of 
Divine decree, it reaches out silently as a 
power. In the mind of God, we may be 
assured, the conception of prayer is no 
fiction, whatever man may think of it. 

It has, and God has determined that it 
should have, a positive and an appreciable 
influence in directing the course of a hu- 
man life. It is, and God has purposed that 
it should be, a link of connection between 
human mind and Divine mind, by which, 
through His infinite condescension, we may 
actually move His will. It is, and God 
has decreed that it should be, a poiver in 
the universe, as distinct, as real, as natu- 
ral, and as uniform, as the power of gravi- 
tation, or of light, or of electricity. A man 



38 



THE STILL HO UK. 



may use it, as trustingly and as soberly a*- 
he would use either of these. It is as trulf 
the dictate of good sense, that a man should 
expect to achieve something by praying, as 
it is that he should expect to achieve some- 
thing by a telescope, or the mariner's com- 
pass, or the electric telegraph. 

This intense practicalness characterizes 
the scriptural ideal of prayer. The Scrip- 
tures make it a reality, and not a reverie. 
They never bury it in the notion of a poetic 
or philosophic contemplation of God. They 
do not merge it in the mental fiction of 
prayer by action in any other or all other 
duties of life. They have not concealed the 
fact of prayer beneath the mystery of prayer. 
The scriptural utterances on the subject of 
prayer admit of no such reduction of tone, 
and confusion of sense, as men often put 
forth in imitating them. Up, on the level 
of inspired thought, prayer is prater — a 
distinct, unique, elemental power in the 



HOPE IN PRAYER. 



39 



spiritual universe, as pervasive and as con- 
stant as the great occult powers of Nature. 

The want of trust in this scriptural ideal 
of prayer, often neutralizes it, even in the 
experience of a Christian. The result can- 
not be otherwise. It lies in the nature of 
mind. 

Observe, for a moment, the philosophy of 
this. Mind is so made, that it needs the 
hope of gaining an object, as an inducement 
to effort. Even so simple an effort as that 
involved in the utterance of desire, no man 
will make persistently, with no hope of 
gaining an object. Despair of an object is 
speechless. So, if you wish to enjoy prayer, 
you must first form to yourself such a the- 
ory of prayer, — or, if you do not con- 
sciously form it, you must have it, — and 
then you must cherish such trust in it, as 
a reality, that you shall feel the force of an 
object in prayer. No mind can feel that it 
has an object in praying, except in such 



40 



THE STILL HOUR. 



degree as it appreciates the scriptural view 
of prayer as a genuine thing. 

Our conviction on this point must be as 
definite and as fixed as our trust in the 
evidence of our senses. It must become 
as natural to us to obey one as the other. 
If we suffer our faith to drop down from 
the lofty conception of prayer as having a 
lodgment in the very counsels of God, by 
which the universe is swayed, the plain 
practicalness of prayer as the Scriptures 
teach it, and as prophets and apostles and 
our Lord himself performed it, drops pro- 
portionately ; and in that proportion, our 
motive to prayer dwindles. Of necessity, 
then, our devotions become spiritless. We 
cannot obey such faith in prayer, with any 
more heart than a man who is afflicted with 
double vision can feel in obeying the evi- 
dence of his eyes. Our supplications can- 
not, under the impulse of such a faith, go, 
as one has expressed it, 4 in a right line 



THE STILL HOUK. 



41 



to God.' They become circuitous, timid, 
heartless. They may so degenerate as to 
be offensive, 'like the reekings of the Dead 
Sea.' 



V. 



AS A PRINCE HAST THOU POWER WITH GOD. 

Gen. 32 : 28. 

A.N intrepid faith in prayer will always 
give it unction. Let the faith of apostles in 
the reality of prayer as a power with God 
take possession of a regenerate heart, and it 
is inconceivable that prayer should be to 
that heart a lifeless — duty. The joy of 
hope, at least, will vitalize the duty. The 
prospect of gaining an object, will always 
affect thus the expression of intense desire. 

The feeling which will become spontane- 
ous with a Christian, under the influence 
of such a trust, is this : 6 1 come to m; 
devotions this morning, on an errand of 
real life. This is no romance and no farce. 



PRAYER A BUSINESS. 



43 



I do not come here to go through a form 
of words. I have no hopeless desires to 
express. I have an object to gain. I have 
an end to accomplish. This is a business 
in which I am about to engage. An astron- 
omer does not turn his telescope to the 
skies with a more reasonable hope of pene- 
trating those distant heavens, than I have 
of reaching the mind of God, by lifting up 
my heart at the throne of Grace. This is 
the privilege of my calling of God in Christ 
Jesus. Even my faltering voice is now to 
be heard in heaven, and it is to put forth a 
power there, the results of which only God 
can know, and only eternity can develop. 
Therefore, 0 Lord! thy servant findethit in 
his heart to pray this prayer unto Thee.' 

' Good prayers,' says an old English di- 
vine, 'never come weeping home. I am 
sure I shall receive either what I ask or 
what I should ask.' Such a habit of feeling 
as this will give to prayer that quality 



44 



THE STILL HOUR. 



which Dr. Chalmers observed as being the 
characteristic of the prayers of Doddridge, 
— that they had an intensely ' business-like' 
spirit. 

Observe how thoroughly this spirit is 
infused into the scriptural representation 
of the interior working of prayer iL. ihe 
counsels of God, respecting the prophet 
Daniel. The narrative is intelligible to a 
child ; yet scarcely another passage .in the 
Bible is so remarkable, in its bearing upon 
the difficulties which our minds often gen- 
erate out of the mystery of prayer. Almost 
the very mechanism of the plan of God, by 
which this invisible power enters into the 
execution of His decrees, is here laid open. 

4 While I was speaking,' the prophet says, 
' Gabriel, being caused to fly swiftly, touched 
me, and said, " 0 Daniel, at the beginning 
of thy supplication, the commandment came 
forth, and I am come to show thee ; for 
thou art greatly beloved."' What greater 



PRAYER OF DANIEL. 



45 



vividness could be given to the reality of 
prayer, even to its occult operation upon 
the Divine decrees? No sooner do the 
words of supplication pass out from the lips, 
than the command is given to one of the 
presence-angels, < Go thou ; ' and he flies 
swiftly to the prostrate suppliant, and 
touches him bodily, and talks with him 
audibly, and assures him that his desire is 
given to him. 'I am come to thee, 0 man 
greatly beloved ; I am commissioned to 
instruct and to strengthen thee. I was 
delayed in my journey to thee, else I had 
come more speedily to thy relief; for one 
and twenty days the prince of Persia with- 
stood me ; but Michael came to help me ; 
the archangel is leagued with me to execute 
the response to thy cry. I must return to 
fight that prince of Persia who would have 
restrained me from thee ; unto thee am I 
sent. From the first day that thou didst 
set thy heart to chasten thyself before thy 



46 



THE STILL HOUR. 



God, thy words were heard ; and I am come 
because of thy words. Again I say, 0 man 
greatly beloved ! fear not ; peace be unto 
thee; be strong, yea, be strong.' Could any 
diagram of the working of prayer amidst 
the purposes of God, give to it a more vivid 
reality in our conceptions, than it receives 
from this little passage of dramatic narra- 
tive, which you will find, in substance, in 
the ninth and tenth chapters of the prophecy 
of Daniel? 

I have sometimes tried to conceive a pan- 
orama of the history of one prayer. I have 
endeavored to follow it from its inception 
in a human mind, through its utterance by 
human lips ; and in its flight up to the ear 
of Him who is its Hearer because He has 
been also its Inspirer ; and on its journey 
around to the unnumbered points in the 
organism of His decrees which this feeble 
human voice reaches, and from which it 
entices a responsive vibration, because this 



MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 



47 



also is a decree of as venerable antiquity as 
theirs ; and in its return from those alti- 
tudes, with its golden train of blessings to 
which eternal counsels have paid tribute, at 
His bidding. I have endeavored to form 
some conception thus, of the methods by 
which this omnipotence of poor human 
speech gains its end, without a shock to the 
system of the universe, with not so much as 
a whit of change to the course of a leaf 
falling in the air. But how futile is the 
strain upon these puny faculties ! How 
shadowy are the thoughts we get from any 
such attempt to master prayer ! Do we not 
fall back with glad relief upon the magni- 
tude of this fact of prayer, c beyond the stars 
heard, 5 and answered through these mini& 
tries of angels ? 

Human art has not yet succeeded in ex- 
tending the electric telegraph around one 
globe. The combined science and skill and 
wealth of the nations have failed thus to 



48 



THE STILL HOUR. 



connect the two continents. But yonder is 
a child, whose lisping tongue is every day 
doing more than that. In God's admin- 
istration of things, that child's morning 
prayer is a mightier reality than that. It 
sets in motion agencies more secret, and 
more impalpable, and yet conscious agen- 
cies, whose chief vocation, so far as we 
know it, is to minister at that child's bid- 
ding. c Verily I say unto you, that in 
heaven their angels do always behold the 
face of my Father who is in heaven.' Could 
we appreciate prayer, think you, as such a 
reality, such a power, so genuine, so vital a 
thing in the working of the Divine plan, so 
free from trammel in its mystery, so much 
resembling the power of God because of its 
mystery, and yet could we find it to be in 
our own experience an insipid - — duty ? 



VI. 



AS THE HART PANTETH AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS. 

PS. 42: 1. 

We lose many prayers for the want of 
two things which support each other, - - 
specificness of object, and intensity of desire. 
One's interest in such an exercise as this, is 
necessarily dependent on the coexistence of 
these qualities. 

In the diary of Dr. Chalmers, we find 
recorded this petition : ' Make me sensible 
of real answers to actual requests, as evi- 
dences of an interchange between myself on 
earth and my Saviour in heaven.' Under 
the sway of intense desires, our minds natu- 
rally long to individualize thus the parties, 

4 



50 



THE STILL HOUR. 



the petitions, the objects, and the results of 
prayer. 

Sir Fowell Buxton writes as follows : 
' When I am out of heart, I follow David's 
example, and fly for refuge to prayer, and 
he furnishes me with a store of prayer. 
* * * I am bound to acknowledge that 
I have always found that my prayers have 
been heard and answered ; * * * * in 
almost every instance I have received what 
I have asked for. * * * Hence, I feel 
permitted to offer up my prayers for every- 
thing that concerns me. * * * I am 
inclined to imagine that there are no little 
things with God. His hand is as manifest 
in the feathers of a butterfly's wing, in the 
eye of an insect, in the folding and packing 
of a blossom, in the curious aqueducts by 
which a leaf is nourished, as in the crea- 
tion of a world, and in the laws by which 
planets move. I understand literally the 
iniunction : "In everything make yotuf re' 



SIR FOWELL BUXTON. 



51 



quests known unto God;" and J cannot but 
notice how amply these prayers have been 
met.' 

Again, writing to his daughter on the 
subject of a 6 division ' in the House of 
Commons, in the conflict for West Indian 
Emancipation, he says: 'What led to that 
division ? If ever there was a subject which 
occupied our prayers, it was this. Do you 
remember how we desired that God would 
give me His Spirit in that emergency : how 
we quoted the promise, "He that lacketh 
wisdom, let him ask it of the Lord, and it 
shall be given him" : and how I kept open 
that passage in the Old Testament, in which 
it is said, "We have no might against this 
great company that cometh against us, 
neither know we what to do, but our eyes 
are upon Thee" — the Spirit of the Lord 
replying, "Be not afraid nor dismayed by 
reason of this great multitude, for the battle 
is not yours, but God's." ? If you want to 



52 



THE STILL HOUR. 



see the passage, open my Bible ; it will turn 
of itself to the place. I sincerely believe 
that prayer was the cause of that division ; 
and I am confirmed in this, by knowing 
that we by no means calculated on the 
effect. The course we took appeared to be 
right, and wo, followed it blindly' 

In these examples is illustrated, in real 
life, the working of these two forces in a 
spirit of prayer, which must naturally exist 
or die together, — intensity of desire, and 
specificness of object. 

Let a man define to his own mind an 
object of prayer, and then let him be moved 
by desires for that object which impel him 
to pray, because he cannot otherwise satisfy 
the irrepressible longings of his soul ; let 
him have such desires as shall lead him to 
search out, and dwell upon, and treasure 
in his heart, and return to again, and ap- 
propriate to himself anew, the encourage- 
ments to prayer, till his Bible opens of itself 



LANGUID DESIRES. 



53 



to the right places — and think you that 
such a man will have occasion to go to his 
closet, or come from it, with the sickly cry, 
6 Why, oh ! why is my intercourse with God 
so irksome to me V Such a man must ex- 
perience, at least, the joy of uttering hope- 
fully emotions which become painful by 
repression. 

On the contrary, let a man's objects of 
thought at the throne of Grace be vague, 
and let his desires be languid, and from the 
nature of the case, his prayers must be both 
languid and vague. Says Jeremy Taylor : 
< Easiness of desire is a great enemy to the 
success of a good man's prayer. It must be 
an intent, zealous, busy, operative prayer. 
For, consider what a huge indecency it is, 
that a man should speak to God for a thing 
that he values not. Our prayers upbraid our 
spirits, when we beg tamely for those things 
for which we ought to die ; which are more 
precious than imperial sceptres, richer than 



54 



THE STILL H0UK. 



the spoils of the sea, or the treasures of 
Indian hills.' 

The scriptural examples of prayer have, 
most of them, an unutterable intensity. 
They are pictures of struggles, in which 
more of suppressed desire is hinted than 
that which is expressed. Recall the wrest- 
ling of Jacob, — ' I will not let thee go ex- 
cept thou bless me ; ' and the £ panting ' and 
'pouring out of soul' of David, — ' 1 cried 
day and night ; my throat is dried : * * 1 
wait for my God ; ' and the importunity of 
the Syro-Phenician woman, with her 'Yes, 
Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the 
children's crumbs ; ' and the persistency of 
Bartimeus, crying out ' the more a great 
deal,' ' Have mercy on me ; ' and the strong 
crying and tears of our Lord, 'If it be 
possible — if it be possible!' There is no 
f easiness of desire ' here. 

The scriptural examples of prayer, also, 
^re clear as light in their objects of thought. 



VAGUENESS OF THOUGHT. 55 



Even those which are calm and sweet, like 
the Lord's prayer, have few and sharply 
defined subjects of devotion. They are not 
discursive and voluminous, like many unin- 
spired forms of supplication. They do not 
range over everything at once. They have 
no vague expressions ; they are crystalline ; 
a child need not read them a second time 
to understand them. As uttered by their 
authors, they were in no antiquated phrase- 
ology ; they were in the fresh forms of a 
living speech. They were, and were meant 
to be, the channels of living thoughts and 
living hearts. 

Let a man, then, be negligent of both 
scriptural example and the nature of his 
own mind ; let him approach God with both 
vagueness of thought and languor of emo- 
tion ; and what else can his prayer be, but 
a weariness to himself and an abomination 
to God ? It would be a miracle, if such 
a suppliant should enjoy success in prater. 



56 



THE STILL HOUR. 



He cannot succeed, he cannot have joy, 
because he has no object that elicits intense 
desire, and no desire that sharpens his ob- 
ject. He has no great, holy, penetrative 
thought in him, which stirs up his sensibili- 
ties ; and no deep, swelling sensibility, there- 
fore, to relieve by prayer. His soul is not 
reached by anything he is thinking about, 
and, therefore, he has no soul to pour out 
before God. Such a man prays because he 
thinks he must pray ; not because he is 
grateful to God that he may pray. There is 
an unspeakable difference between ' must ' 
and 6 may.' It is his conscience that prays ; 
it is not his heart. His language is the 
language of his conscience. He prays in 
words which ought to express his heart, not 
in those which do express it. Hence arises 
that experience, so distressful to an ingenu- 
ous mind, in which devotion is prompted by 
no vividness of conception, rolling up a 
force of sensibility to the level of the lips, 



CONSCIENCE IN PRAYER. 57 



so that it can flow forth in childlike, hon- 
est speech. 

Such an experience, so far from render- 
ing prayer a joy either sweet and placid, or 
ecstatic, can only cause the time spent in 
the closet to be the season of periodical tor- 
ture to a sensitive conscience, like that of a 
victim daily stretched on a rack. For it is 
in such prayer, that such a conscience is 
most vehement in its reproaches, and guilt 
seems to be heaped up most rapidly. Oh, 
wretched man that he is ! Who shall de- 
liver him? 



VII. 



THAT DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 

John 21 : 7. 

Some Christians do not cultivate the tem- 
perament of prayer. Devout joy is more 
facile to some temperaments than to others ; 
yet, in all, it is susceptible of culture. Es- 
pecially is it true, that prayer is in its 
nature emotive. It is an expression of feel- 
ing : not necessarily of tumultuous feeling, 
but naturally of profound and fluent feel- 
ing, and, in its most perfect type, of habitual 
feeling. To enjoy prayer, we must be used 
to it. Therefore, we must be used to the 
sensibility of which it is the expression. 
Devotion should spring up spontaneously 
from an emotive state, rather than be forced 



TEMPERAMENT OF PRAYER. 59 



out in jets of sensibility, on great occa- 
sions. 

The necessity of this is often overlooked 
by Christians, whose lives, in other respects, 
are not visibly defective. They do not 
possess desires which may very naturally 
be expressed in prayer. They have no deep 
subsoil of feeling from which prayer would 
be a natural growth. The religion of some 
of us — whatever may be true of our oppo- 
sites in temperament — is not sufficiently a 
religion of emotion. We have not suffi- 
ciently cherished our Christian sensibilities. 
We have not cultivated habits of religious 
desire, which are buoyant in their working. 
We have not so trained our hearts, that a 
certain emotive current is always ebullient, 
welling up from the depths of the soul, like 
the springs of the deepest sea. We think 
more than we believe. We believe more 
than we have faith in. Our faith is too 
calm, too cool, too sluggish. Our theory 



60 



THE STILL HOUR. 



of the Christian life is that of a clear, erect, 
inflexible head, not of a great heart in 
which deep calleth unto deep. 

This clear-headed type of piety has invalu- 
able uses, if it be tempered with meekness, 
with gentleness, with 6 bowels of mercies.' 
But we must confess, that it does not always 
bear well the drill which the world gives it 
in selfish usage. It too often grows hard, 
solid, icy. It reminds one of the man with 
a ' cold heart,' whose blood never ran warm, 
whose eye was always glassy, whose touch 
was always clammy, and whose breath was 
always like an east wind. Such a religious 
temperament as this, will never do for the 
foundation of a life of joy in communion 
with God. We must have more of the ear- 
nest nature of the loved disciple, more of 
the spirit of the visions of Patmos. 

Our Northern and Occidental constitution 
often needs to be restrained from an excess 
of phlegmatic wisdom. I must think, that 



ORIENTAL DEVOTION. 



61 



we have something to learn from the more 
impulsive working of the Southern and the 
Oriental mind. I must believe, that it was 
not without a wise forecast of the world's 
necessities, and an insight into human na- 
ture all around, that God ordained that the 
Bible, which should contain our best models 
of sanctified culture, should be constructed 
in the East, and by the inspiration of minds 
of an Eastern stock and discipline ; whose 
imaginative faculty could conceive such a 
poem as the Song of Solomon ; and whose 
emotive nature could be broken up like the 
fountains of a great deep. I must anticipate, 
that an improved symmetry of character 
will be imparted to the experience of the 
church, and more of the beauty of holiness 
will adorn her courts, when the Oriental 
world shall be converted to Christ, and 
Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto 
God. Our unimpassioned, taciturn, and 
often cloudy temperament in religion, does 



62 



THE STILL HOUR. 



need an infusion of the piety which will 
grow up in those lands of the sun. 

Such an infusion of the Oriental life-blood 
into the stock of our Christian experience, 
would bring us into closer sympathy with 
the types of sanctification represented in the 
Scriptures. It would be like streams from 
Lebanon to our culture. We need it, to 
render the Psalms of David, for instance, a 
natural expression of our devotions. We 
need a culture of sensibility which shall de- 
mand these Psalms as a medium of utterance. 

We need habits of feeling, disciplined 
indeed, not effervescent, not mystic, but, on 
the other hand, not crushed, not fearful of 
outflow, not bereaved of speech. We need 
a sensitiveness to the objects of our faith, 
which shall create desire for the objects of 
prayer, not passionate, not devoid of self- 
possession, but fluent and self-forgetful in 
its earnestness, so that it shall have more 
of the grace of a child in its outgoings. 



THE STILL HOUR. 



63 



Of such an experience, intercourse with 
God in prayer would be the necessary ex- 
pression. It could find no other so fit. 
Joy in that intercourse would be like the 
swellings of Jordan 



VIIL 



YE SAID ALSO, BEHOLD WHAT A WEARINESS IS IT ! 

Mal. 1 : 13. 

We offer many dead prayers, through 
mental indolence. This fact is often forgot- 
ten, that prayer is one of the most spiritual 
of the duties of religion, spiritual as distinct 
from corporeal. It is the communion of a 
spiritual soul with a spiritual God. God 
calls himself the Former, only, of our bodies, 
but the Father of our spirits. So prayer, 
to be a filial intercourse with Him, must be 
abstract from sensation. Do we not natu- 
rally seek darkness in our devotions ? Why 
is it, that to pray with open eyes seems 
either heartless or ghastly ? So, too, do we 
seek stillness and solitude. Only a Pharisee 



INTELLECT IN PRAYER 



65 



can pray at the corner of a street. A truly 
devout spirit learns to sing from its own 
experience — 

e Blest is the tranquil hour of morn, 

And blest that hour of solemn eve, 
When, on the wings of prayer upborne, 
The world I leave.' 

Physical enjoyment is as much a drag 
upon the spirit of worship as physical pain. 
We want nothing to remind us of our cor- 
poreal being, in these hours of communion 
with Him who seeth in secret. We worship 
One who is a Spirit. A soul caught up to 
the third heaven in devout ecstasy, cannot 
tell whether it be in the body or out of the 
body. 

These well-known phenomena of prayer 
suggest its purely mental character. They 
involve, also, the need of mental exertion, 
' We may pray with the intellect without 
praying with the heart ; but we cannot pray 
5 



66 



THE STILL HOUR. 



with the heart without praying with the 
intellect.' 

True, there is, as we shall have occasion 
to observe, a state of devotional culture 
which may render prayer habitually sponta- 
neous, so that the mind shall be uncon- 
scious of toil in it, but shall spring to it 
rather as to its native and wonted atmos- 
phere of joy. This is the reward of prac- 
ticed effort in all things. But who can num- 
ber the struggles with a wayward spirit, 
which must create that high deportment in 
devotion ? 

True, there may be hours when the 
mind is alert, from other causes ; when 
the fountains of the soul are unsealed by 
a great sorrow, or a great deliverance : 
when before we called, God has heard us, 
and the Spirit now helps our infirmities, so 
that thought is nimble, sensibility is fluent, 
and the mouth speaketh out of the abun- 
dance of the heart. Yet such unforseen 



SIMPLICITY OF PRAYER. 



6T 



and gratuitous aids to mental elasticity, 
are not the law of devotional life. In 
this, as in other things, no great blessing 
is given thoughtlessly, and none can be 
received thus. The law of blessing, allies 
it in some sort with struggles of our own. 

True, God's condescension is nowhere 
more conspicuous than in His hearing of 
prayer. No ponderous intellectual machin- 
ery is needful to its dignity ; no loftiness of 
reasoning, no magnificence of imagery, no 
polish of diction ; no learning, no art, no 
genius. In its very conception, prayer im- 
plies a descent of the Divine Mind to the 
homes of men ; and with no design to lift 
men up out of the sphere of their lowliness, 
intellectually. Bruised reeds, smoking flax, 
broken hearts, dumb sufferers, the slow of 
speech, timid believers, tempted spirits, — 
weakness in all its varieties, — find a refuge 
in that thought of God, which nothing else 
reveals so affectingly as the gift of prayer, 



68 



THE STILL HOUR. 



that He is a very present help in every 
time of trouble. He whom the heaven of 
heavens cannot contain, 6 has come down 
and placed Himself in the centre of the 
Little circle of human ideas and affections,' 
as if for the purpose of making our 6 relig- 
ion always the homestead of common feel- 
ings.' It has been debated by philoso- 
phers, whether prayer be not of the nature 
of poetry. Yet poetry has seldom attempted 
to describe prayer : and, when it has done 
so, what is the phraseology in which it has 
spoken to our hearts most convincingly ? 
Is it that of magnificent and transcendental 
speech ? Xo ; it portrays prayer to us as 
only 

' The motion of a hidden fire 
That trembles in the "breast/ — 

as the mere 8 burden of a sigh,' the ' fall- 
ing of a tear.' £ the. upward glancing of 
an eye.' the 'simplest form of speech' on 
i infant lips.' 



COLERIDGE. 



69 



All this is true, and no idea of the intel- 
lectuality of prayer should be entertained 
which conflicts with this. But we degrade 
the dignity of God's condescension, if we 
abuse His indulgence of our weakness to 
an encouragement of our indolence. Must 
we not wince under the rebuke of the 
preacher at Golden Grove : ' Can we ex- 
pect that our sins can be washed by a lazy 
prayer ? We should not dare to throw 
away our prayers so, like fools ' ? 

Coleridge, in his later manhood, expressed 
his sorrow at having written so shallow a 
sentiment on the subject of prayer, as that 
contained in one of his youthful poems, in 
which, speaking of God, he had said — 

* Of whose all-seeing eye 
Aught to demand were impotence of mind/ 

This sentiment he so severely condemned, 
that he said he thought the act of praying 
to be, in its most perfect form, the very 



70 



THE STILL HOUR. 



highest energy of which the human heart 
was capable. The large majority of worldly 
men, and of learned men, he pronounced 
incapable of executing his ideal of prayer. 

Many scriptural representations of the 
idea of devotion come up fully to this 
mark. The prayer of a righteous man, 
that availeth much, which our English 
Bible so infelicitously describes as 6 effec- 
tual, fervent,' is in the original an 6 ener- 
getic^ prayer, a 'working' prayer. Some 
conception of the inspired thought in the 
epithet may be derived from the fact, that 
the same word is elsewhere used, to in- 
tensify the description of the power of the 
Holy Spirit in a renewed heart. Thus : 
' According to the power that worketh in 
us,' — the power that energizes us in a holy 
life : — such is the inspired idea of a good 
man's prayer. 

^Vhat else is the force of the frequent 
conjunction of 4 watching ' and 6 praying,' 



ENERGY IN PRAYER. 



71 



in the scriptural style of exhortation to 
the duties of the closet ? Thus : ' Watch 
and pray, 6 watch unto prayer,' 6 praying 
always and watching,' 4 continue in prayer 
and watch : ' there is no mental lassitude, 
no self-indulgence here. It was a lament 
of the prophet over the degeneracy of 
God's people : ' None stirreth himself up 
to take hold of Thee.' Paul exhorts the 
Romans to 6 strive together with him in 
their prayers,' and commends an ancient 
preacher to the confidence of the Colos- 
sians, as one who ' labored fervently in 
prayers.' There is no droning or drawling 
effort here. 

Indeed, what jieed have we of more sig- 
nificant teaching on this point than our 
own experience ? Setting aside as excep- 
tional, emergencies in which God con- 
descends to our incapacity of great mental 
exertion, do we not habitually feel the need 
of such exertion in our devotions ? Is not 



72 



THE STILL HOUR. 



even a painful effort of intellect often need> 
ful to recall our minds from secular en- 
gagements, and to give us vivid thoughts 
of God and of eternity ? I do not assume 
that this ought to be so, or need be ; I speak 
of what is, in the ordinary life of Chris- 
tians. 

Prayer can have no intelligent fervor, 
unless the objects of our faith are repre- 
sented with some degree of vividness, in our 
conceptions of them. But this is a pro- 
cess of intellect. As we must have clear 
thought before we can have intelligent feel- 
ing, so must we have vivid thought before 
we can have profound feeling. But this, I 
repeat, is a process of intellect. 

Yet, do we not often come to the hour 
and place of prayer, burdened by an ex- 
hausted body ; with intellect stupefied by 
the absorption of its forces in the plans, the 
toils, the perplexities, the disappointments, 
the irritations of the day ? How wearily 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 



73 



do we often drag this great earthen world 
behind us, into the presence of God ! Is 
not our first petition, often, an ejaculation 
for the ornament of a meek and quiet 
spirit ? But, in such a state of body and 
of mind, to acquire impressive conceptions 
of God and of eternity, is an intellectual 
change. I do not affirm that a state of 
intellect is all that is involved here ; but 
intellectual change is indispensable ; and 
it requires exertion. 

On this topic, what can the man do 
that cometh after the King ? Let us hear 
Jeremy Taylor once more. His description 
of a good man's prayer, though well known, 
one can never outgrow. 

4 Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the 
stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of 
our recollection, the seat of our meditation, 
the rest of our cares, and the calm of our 
tempest. Prayer is the issue of a quiet 
mind, of untroubled thoughts ; it is the 



74 



THE STILL HOUR. 



daughter of charity and the sister of meek- 
ness. He that prays to God with * * 
a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like 
him that retires into a battle to meditate, 
and sets up his closet in the out-quarters 
of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison 
to be wise in. 

{ For so have I seen a lark rising from 
his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, sing- 
ing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, 
and climb above the clouds ; but the poor 
bird was beaten back by the loud sighings 
of an eastern wind, and his motion made 
irregular and inconstant, descending more 
at every breath of the tempest than it could 
recover by the libration and frequent weigh- 
ing of his wings, till the little creature was 
forced to sit down and pant, and stay till 
the storm was over : and then it made a 
prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as 
if it had learned music and motion from 



SERENITY OF PRAYER. 



75 



an angel, as he passed sometime through 
the air, about his ministries here below. 

6 So is the prayer of a good man. When 
his affairs have required business, * * 
his duty met with infirmities of a man, 
* * and the instrument became stronger 
than the prime agent, and raised a tem- 
pest, and overruled the man ; and then his 
prayer was broken, and his thoughts were 
troubled, and his words went up towards a 
cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back 
again, and made them without intention ; 
and the good man sighs for his infirmity, 
but must be content to lose his prayer ; 
and he must recover it when * * his 
spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow 
of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God : 
and then it ascends to heaven upon the 
wings of a holy dove, and dwells with God, 
till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden 
with a blessing and the dew of heaven.' 



IX. 



YE HAVE BROUGHT THAT WHICH WAS TORN. AND 
THE LAME . AND THE SICK. SHOULD I ACCEPT THIS 
OF YOUR HAND ? — Mai. 1: 13. 

Our mental indolence may poison the 
very fountain of prayer. Are we not often 
reminded of our need of an effort of intel- 
lect, to enable us to realize to ourselves the 
personality of God, and to address to Him 
the language of supplication, as if to a 
friend who is invisibly with us ? What is 
left of prayer, if these two things are 
abstracted from it — a sense of the personal 
presence and of the personal friendship of 
God? He that cometh unto God. must be- 
lieve that He is, and that He is a rewarder. 



IDOLATRY IN PRAYER. 



77 



Subtract these from our ideal in prayer, 
and all that remains the Polish peasant 
possessed, when he strung his prayers upon 
a windmill, and counted so many to the 
credit side of his conscience, with every 
turn of the wheel. 

A plain man once said : ' Before my con- 
version, when I prayed in the presence of 
others, I prayed to them; when I prayed 
in secret, I prayed to myself; but now I 
pray to Grod.' But your experience has 
doubtless taught you, long before this time, 
that one of the most difficult things in- 
volved in an act of devotion, is to secure to 
it this reality of intercourse between the 
soul and a present friend. 

Does it cost us no effort to feel, in the 
silence and solitude of the closet, the truth- 
fulness of language like this ? — perhaps we 
are sometimes assisted by uttering it audi- 
bly, — ' God is here, within these walls; 
before me, behind me, on my right hand, 



78 



THE STILL HOUR. 



on my left hand. He who fills immensity 
has come down to me here. I am now 
about to bow at His feet, and speak to Him. 
He will hear the very words I utter. I 
may pour forth my desires before Him, and 
not one syllable from my lips shall escape 
His ear. I may speak to Him as I would 
to the dearest friend I have on earth, 
whose hand I should grasp, and whose eye 
I should watch, and in the changes of 
whose speaking countenance I should read 
the interest which he felt in my story. 
Yes ; I am about to speak to God, though 
I do not see Him ; no image of Him aids 
my vision or my faith : though I do not 
hear His footfall around me; He is not 
in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor 
in the fire. Yet He is here as truly as if 
clothed in a refulgent body, and these eyes 
could look upon Him, and these ears could 
hear the sound of His tread.' 



DIFFICULTY OF PRAYER. 79 



1 Jesus, these eyes have never seen 
That radiant form of thine ! 
The veil of sense hangs dark between 
Thy blessed face and mine! 

' I see Thee not, I hear Thee not, 
Yet art Thou oft with me ; 
And earth hath ne'er so dear a spot 
As where I meet with Thee.' 

In this manner, to feel the reality of 
God's spiritual presence, and then to speak 
the language of adoration, confession, peti- 
tion, thanksgiving, with a continuous sense 
of its being, as Chalmers longed to feel it, 
an actual interchange between ourselves 
and God, a real conference of friends, — 
this, surely, is not at all times, in all states 
of the body, in all moods of sensibility, 
under all varieties of circumstance, natural 
to fallen minds like ours. It is not a state 
of mind to which, without culture, without 
discipline in Christian life, we spring spon- 
taneously, involuntarily, as we spring to 



80 



THE STILL HOUR. 



conscious thinking when we wake from 
sleep. A process of intellect is involved in 
it which demands exertion. 

The difficulty is that which idolatry was 
invented to meet, by furnishing an image 
of God to aid the mind ; that is, by giving 
it an object of sense, to relieve it from the 
labor of forming the conception of a spirit- 
ual Deity. 

Is it not evident, then, what effect must 
be produced upon our devotional hours, if 
we squander them, through a habit of in- 
tellectual indolence ? It has been said that 
we are all born idolaters. We truly are 
very like idolaters in indolent prayer. Pur- 
sue this thought, for a moment, into the 
details of individual experience, and let us 
have courage to look the evil in the face, 
and call it by its right name ; for this is 
a matter which, to be felt as it deserves, 
needs to be permitted to pierce to the most 
secret habits of the closet. 



INDOLENCE IN PRAYER. 



81 



Imagine, then, that you go to your place 
of retirement reluctantly, listlessly. Your 
mind, perhaps, is in a state of reaction from 
the excitements of the day. You are in- 
disposed to thought of any kind. You have 
no eagerness of search after God ; it is not 
the struggling cry of your heart, ' Oh that 
I knew where I might find Him ! ' From 
sheer reluctance to endure the labor of 
thinking, you neglect preparatory medita- 
tion. You read the Scriptures indolently; 
you do not expect, or seek for a spur to 
your own conceptions, in the words of in- 
spired thinkers. Your indolent mind in- 
fects the body with its infirmity; you 
instinctively choose that posture in your 
devotions, which is most tempting to physi- 
cal repose. 

Imagine that, in the act of prayer, your 

mind dreams its way through a dialect of 

dead words ; it floats on the current of a 

stereotyped phraseology, which once leaped 
6 



&2 THE STILL HOUR. 

with life from the lips of holy men who or- 
iginated it : but some of which, your mem- 
ory obliges you to confess, never had any 
vitality in your own thoughts. It was 
never original with you : you have never 
worked it out in your own experience : 
you have never lived it : it has never 
forced itself into expression, as the fruit 
of sell-knowledge or of self-conflict. 

Or. imagine that you invariably, or even 
habitually, pray inaudibly. because the lux- 
uriousness of silent thought is more facile 
to an indolent spirit, than the labor of ex- 
pressing thought with the living voice. 
You cannot often say. with David. • I cried 
unto the Lord with my voice: with my 
voice unto the Lord did I make my suppli- 
cation.' You do not pause, and straggle 
with yourself, and gird up your loins like 
a man. and ejaculate a cry for Divine aid, 
in the mastery of thoughts which wander 
like the fool's eyes. And you close your 



A SECRET FAULT. 



83 



prayer, with a formula which touches the 
very soul of faith, and hope, and love, and 
all that is grand and mysterious and eter- 
nal in redemption, — a formula hallowed 
by centuries of prayer ; yet, in uttering it, 
when you say : 6 For Christ' s sake, Amen,' 
your mind is not conscious of a single defi- 
nite, affecting thought, of either the history 
or the meaning of that language. 

Imagine this as a scene of real life in 
the closet. Is this a caricature of some 
possible modes of secret devotion ? And 
if it is not, is it marvellous that such devo- 
tion should be afflicted, with a want of en- 
joyment of the Divine presence ? ' Should 
I accept this of your hand ? saith the Lord.' 

The truth is, that an indulgence of slug- 
gishness of mind is sometimes the secret 
sin of good men. It is the iniquity which 
they regard in their hearts, and because of 
which God will not hear them. Mental 
ease is a refined and seductive idol, which 



84 



THE STILL HOUR. 



often beguiles men who have too much 
Christian principle, or too much delicacy 
of nature 9 or too much prudence of self- 
control, or it may be too much pride of 
character, to fall into a physical vice. 

When good men are ensnared in this 
sl^ek idolatry, before the decline of old 
ago, or the infirmities of disease render 
rest a necessity, God often breaks in upon 
it with the blows of His hard hand. He 
fights against it ' with battles of shaking ' : 
and in part with the design of recalling 
His mistaken friends, into closer com- 
munion with Himself. He thwarts their 
plans of life. He sends troubles to plague 
them. He knocks out from under them, 
the props of their comfort. He does this, in 
part, for the sake of startling their torpid 
minds, and thus reaching their stagnant 
hearts, by giving them something to think 
of, which they feel they must make the sub- 
ject of living, agonizing prayer. 



THE STILL HOUR. 



85 



Oh ! God's thoughts are not as our 
thoughts. Dear as our happiness is to 
Him, there is another thing within us, 
which is more precious in His sight. It 
is of far less consequence, in any Divine 
estimate of things, how much a man suf- 
fers, than — what the man is. 



X. 



COULD YE XOT WATCH WITH ME OXE HOUR ? 

Matt. 26 : 40. 

We are often in a religious hurry in our 
devotions. How much time do we spend 
in them daily ? Can it not be easily reck- 
oned in minutes ? 

Probably, many of us would be discom- 
posed by an arithmetical estimate of our 
communion with God. It might reveal to 
us the secret of much of our apathy in 
prayer, because it might disclose how little 
we desire to be alone with God. We might 
learn from such a computation, that Augus- 
tine's idea of prayer, as ' the measure of 
love,' is not very flattering to us. We do 
not grudge time given to a privilege which 
we love. 



HASTE IN PRAYER. 



87 



Why should we expect to enjoy a duty 
which we have no time to enjoy ? Do we 
enjoy anything which we do in a hurry ? 
Enjoyment presupposes something of men- 
tal leisure. How often do we say of a 
pleasure, 6 1 wanted more time to enjoy it 
to my heart's content.' But of ail employ- 
ments, none can be more dependent on 
' time for it,' than stated prayer. 

Fugitive acts of devotion, to be of high 
value, must be sustained by other ap- 
proaches to God, deliberate, premeditated, 
regular, which shall be to those acts like 
the abutments of a suspension-bridge to the 
arch that spans the stream. It will never 
do, to be in desperate haste in laying such 
foundations. This thoughtful duty, this 
spiritual privilege, this foretaste of incor- 
poreal life, this communion with an unseen 
Friend, — can you expect to enjoy it as 
you would a repartee or a dance ? 

In the royal gallery at Dresden, may be 



88 



THE STILL HOUR. 



often seen a group of connoisseurs, who 
sit for hours before a single painting. 
They walk around those halls and corri- 
dors, whose walls are so eloquent with the 
triumphs of Art, and they come back and 
pause again before that one masterpiece. 
They go away, and return the next day, 
and again the first and the last object which 
charms their eye, is that canvas on which 
Genius has pictured more of beauty than on 
any other in the world. Weeks are spent 
every year, in the study of that one work of 
Raphael. Lovers of Art cannot enjoy it to 
the full, till they have made it their own, by 
prolonged communion with its matchless 
forms. Says one of its admirers : 6 1 could 
spend an hour every day, for years, upon 
that assemblage of human, and angelic, and 
divine ideals, and on the last day of the last 
year discover some new beauty, and a new 
joy.' 

I have seen men standing in the street, 



PRAYER A COMMUNION. 



89 



before an engraving of that gem of the 
Dresden Gallery, a longer time than a good 
man will sometimes devote to his evening 
prayer. Yet, what thoughts, what ideals 
of grace, can Genius express in a painting, 
demanding time for their appreciation and 
enjoyment, like those great thoughts of God, 
of Heaven, of Eternity, which the soul needs 
to conceive vividly^ in order to know the 
blessedness of prayer ? What conceptions 
<5an Art imagine of the 6 Divine Child,' 
which can equal in spirituality, the thoughts 
which one needs to entertain of Christ, in. 
the ' prayer of faith ' ? We cannot hope, 
commonly, to spring into possession of such 
thoughts, in the twinkling of an eye. 

Prayer, as we have observed, is an act of 
friendship also. It is intercourse ; an act 
of trust, of hope, of love, all prompting to 
interchange between the soul and an Infi- 
nite, Spiritual, Invisible Friend. We all 
need prayer, if for no other purpose, for 



90 



THE STILL HOUB. 



this which we so aptly call communion with 
God. 

Robert Bums lamented that he could not 
'pour out his inmost soul without reserve 
to any human being, without danger of one 
day repenting his confidence.' He com 
menced a journal of his own mental history, 
6 as a substitute,' he said, £ for a confidential 
friend.' He would have something £ which 
he could record himself in,' without peril 
of having his confidence betrayed. We all 
need prayer, as a means of such intercourse 
with a Friend who will be true to us. 

Zinzendorf, when a boy, used to write 
little notes to the Saviour, and throw them 
out of the window, hoping that He would 
find them. Later in life, so strong was hk 
faith in the friendship of Christ, and in his 
own need of that friendship as a daily sol 
ace, that once, when travelling, he sent 
back his companion, that he might converse 



STUDIOUS PRAYER. 



91 



more freely with ' the Lord,' with whom he 
spoke audibly. 

So do we all need friendly converse with 
Him whom our souls love. 6 He alone is a 
thousand companions ; he alone is a world 
of friends. Tl*at man never knew what it 
was to be familiar with God, who complains 
of the want of friends while God is with 
him. 9 

But who can originate such conceptions 
of God, as are necessary to the enjoyment 
of His friendship in prayer, without time for 
thought, for self-collection, for concentra- 
tion of soul ? Momentary devotion, if genu- 
ine, must presuppose the habit of studious 
prayer. 

We have portraits of deceased friends, 
before which we love to sit by the hour, 
striving to recall the living features which 
are so feebly portrayed there, and to resus- 
citate the history of expression on those 
countenances in life, which no Art could fix 



92 



THE STILL HOUR. 



on canvas, and to which our own memory 
is becoming treacherous. Have we never 
struggled with the twilight, to make those 
loved but flitting expressions live again ? 

Yet, have we any more vivid or indelible 
conceptions of God, 'whom no man hath 
seen at any time ' ? How can we expect to 
enjoy a sense of the friendship of a present 
Saviour, if we never linger in the twilight, 
to freshen and intensify our thoughts of 
Him ? Does He never speak to us that 
plaintive reproof, ' Could ye not watch with 
me one hour ? ' 

A very busy Christian says, 'This is a 
cloisteral piety which demands much time 
for secret prayer.' No, not that. But, on 
the other hand, it is not a piety which, in its 
recoil from the monastery, is heedless of the 
look of business in devotion, which is ex- 
pressed by the words, ' Enter into thy closet 
and shut thy door;' and of the scriptural 
stress upon perseverance in prayer ; and of 



CONTINUANCE IN PRAYER. 93 



the inspired idea of fasting and prayer ; and 
of the historic argument from the example 
of eminent saints, both of Biblical, and of 
later times. 

Who ever knew an eminently holy man, 
who did not spend much- of his time in 
prayer ? Did ever a man exhibit much of 
the spirit of prayer, who did not devote 
much time to his closet ? Whitefield says, 
* Whole days and weeks have I spent pros- 
trate on the ground, in silent or vocal 
prayer.' 4 Fall upon your knees, and grow 
there,' is the language of another, who knew 
that whereof he affirmed. These, in spirit, 
are but specimens of a feature in the expe- 
rience of eminent piety, which is absolutely 
uniform. 

It has been said, that no great work in 
literature or in science was ever wrought 
by a man who did not love solitude. We 
may lay it down as an elemental principle 
of religion, that no large growth in holiness 



94 



THE STILL HOUR. 



was ever gained, by one who did not take 
time to be often, and long, alone with Grod. 
This kind goeth not out but by prayer and 
fasting. No otherwise can the great cen- 
tral idea of God enter into a man's life, and 
dwell there supreme. 

'Holiness,' says Dr. Cudworth, 'is some- 
thing of God, wherever it is. It is an efflux 
from Him, and lives in Him ; as the sun- 
beams, although they gild this lower world, 
and spread their golden wings over us, yet 
they are not so much here where they shine, 
as in the sun from whence they flow.' Such 
a possession of the idea of God, we never 
gain but from still hours. For such holy 
joy in God, we must have much of the 
spirit of Him who rose up a great while 
before day, and departed into a solitary 
place and prayed, and who continued all 
night in prayer ; ' the morning star finding 
Him where the evening star had left Him.' 



XI. 



A DEVOUT MAN, ONE THAT PRAYED ALWAYS. 

Acts 10 : 2. 

We miss very much devotional joy, by 
the neglect of fragmentary prayer. In the 
intervals which separate periodical seasons 
of devotion, we need a habit of offering up 
brief ejaculatory expressions of devout feel- 
ing. The morning and the evening sacrifice 
depend very much upon these interspersed 
offerings, as these in return are dependent 
on those. Communion with God in both, is 
assisted by linking the ' set times ' together 
by a chain of heavenward thoughts and 
aspirations, in the breaks which occur in 
our labors and amusements. Sunrise and 
sunset may attract our attention more 



96 



THE STILL HOUR. 



strongly than the succession of golden 
rays between them, but who can say that 
they are more cheering ? It is not often 
that a day wholly clouded lies between two 
clear twilights. 

Prayer, as we have seen, is ? in the high- 
est conception of it, a state rather than an 
act. A full fruition of its benefits depends 
on a continuity of its influences. Reduce 
it to two isolated experiments daily, and 
separate these by long blank hours in which 
the soul has no glimpse of God for its re- 
freshment, and how can prayer be other 
than a toil, and often a drudgery ? 

We come to the eventide with the im- 
pression of the morning watch all obliter- 
ated ; probably with a conscience burdened 
by accumulations of sin upon an ungov- 
erned spirit through the day. We feel that 
we must take a new start every time we 
seek God's presence. Our sense of spirit- 
ual progress is lost. Sinning and repenting 



FRAGMENTARY PRAYER. 



97 



is all our life ; we do not have holy force 
enough to get beyond repentance in our 
devotion. Our prayers, instead of being, 
as they should be, advancing steps, are like 
the steps of a tread-mill. Humane law has 
abandoned this, even as a punishment for 
felons ; why should one whom Christ has 
made free inflict it upon himself ? 

We need, then, something that shall make 
our prayerful hours support each other — 
the morning tributary to the evening, and 
the evening to the morning. Nothing else 
can do this so naturally as the habit of ejac- 
ulatory prayer. The spirit of prayer may 
run along the line of such a habit through 
a lifetime. So, one may live in a state of 
prayer, 6 a devout man that prays always.' 

Not only does this habit of fragmentary 
prayer contribute to a lofty, devotional spirit, 
but such a spirit demands it for its own 
indulgence. 

It is characteristic of minds which are as- 



98 



THE STILL HOUR. 



piring in their piety, and which have begun 
to reap the reward of arduous devotional 
culture, to be habitually conversant with 
G-od. Such minds are constantly looking 
up. In the very midst of earthly toils, they 
seize moments of relief, to spring up to the 
eminences of meditation, where they love to 
dwell. In the discharge of duties most un- 
friendly to holy joy. they are apt to expe- 
rience a buoyancy of impulse towards a 
heavenly plane of thought, which it may 
even require a power of self-denial to keep 
down. 

Critics have observed, that in the apos- 
tolic epistles, doxologies are sometimes em- 
bedded in passages of remonstrance and of 
warning. It should seem, that the apostolic 
mind came down unwillingly, or from a 
sense of duty only, to deal with the sins and 
weaknesses of earth : and was on the watch 
for chances to rise, like a bird let loose, 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 99 

though but for a moment, into the upper 
air. 

Such is the nature of holiness. Being 
from God, it is ever seeking to revert to its 
source. The heavier the pressure of a mum 
dane life upon it, the stronger is the force 
of its compressed aspirations. Such pres- 
sure is like that of the atmosphere on 
water, which seeks, through crevices in its 
enclosure, the level of its fountain. A spirit 
like this, I repeat, will demand the habit of 
fragmentary prayer for its own holy indul- 
gence ; and will demand it with an impor- 
tunity proportioned to the superincumbent 
weight of earthly cares. 

The providence of God, also, contem- 
plates these impulses as a counterpart to 
certain of its own procedures. 

Under the laws of Providence, life is a pro- 
bation ; probation is a succession of tempta- 
tions ; temptations are emergencies ; and 
for emergencies we need the preparation 



100 



THE STILL HOUR. 



and the safeguard of prayer. We have du« 
ties which are perilous. We meet surprises 
of evil. We struggle with a wily adversary. 
We feel perplexities of conscience, in which 
holy decision depends on the mind we bring 
to them. We encounter disappointments 
which throw us back from our hopes rudely. 
We have difficult labors, in which we some- 
times come to a c dead-lock ; ' we do not know 
what to do. We have an unknown experi- 
ence opening upon us every hour. We are 
like travellers in a fog, who cannot see an 
arm's-length before them. Providence is 
thus continually calling for the aids of 
prayer ; and in a soul which is keen in its 
vigilance, prayer will be continually respon- 
sive to providences, often anticipative of 
them. 

The methods of the Holy Spirit also, pre- 
suppose the value of these fragmentary de- 
votions. God often secretly inclines a Chris- 
tian's heart to engage in them. 



SECRET PROMPTINGS. 101 



Are there not, in the lives of us all, mo- 
ments when, without the formality of retire- 
ment to the closet, we feel disposed to pray ? 
We are conscious of special attraction to- 
wards God. Perhaps with no obvious rea- 
son for 6 looking up ' now rather than an 
hour ago, we do look up. 6 We feel just like 
praying.' It is as if we heard heavenly 
voices saying, £ Come up hither. ' 

There is often a beautiful alliance be- 
tween Providence and Grace, in these expe- 
riences. A Christian who will be studious 
of his own history, will probably discover, 
that often the occasions for such fragmentary 
communings with God follow hard upon 
these secret incitements to them. Emergen- 
cies come soon for which they are needed. 
The Holy Spirit has anticipated them, and 
sought to forearm us. Providence and 
Grace thus hover over us, not far asunder. 

In this view, those Biblical exhortations 
to prayer, which men have sometimes 



102 



THE STILL HOUR. 



deemed extravagant, are transparently ra- 
tional : k Continue in prayer ; ' < Continue 
instant in prayer ; ' 6 Pray without ceasing ;* 
' Men ought always to pray ; ' ' Rejoice in 
the Lord always ! ' Such exhortations con- 
template a state, not insulated acts, of 
prayer. They fit in well, to the system 
of things in which we are living ; for, that 
system seems, on all sides of it, to pre- 
suppose just this continuity of unpremedi- 
tated ejaculations, joining together our sta- 
ted seasons of devotion. 

No Christian, then, can afford to be fru- 
gal of prayer, in the intervals of daily busi- 
ness and amusement. Enjoyment of all 
communion with God must be impaired, by 
the loss of these little tributaries. A Chris- 
tian's life, so conducted, must languish as a 
tree does, whose fibrous roots are stripped 
off, leaving only its truncal roots, possibly 
only a tap-root, for its nourishment, That 
Christian is hoping against impossibilities, 



CONTENDING WITH GOD. 103 



who thinks to enjoy a life of intercourse 
with God, in any such way. 

We are opposing God's method of work- 
ing, if our life has a tendency to incapaci- 
tate us for the enjoyment of prayer at all 
times. If by needless excess of worldly 
cares ; if by inordinate desires, which ren- 
der it impossible for us to accomplish our 
objects in life without such excess of care ; 
if by frivolous habits ; if by the reading of 
infidel or effeminate literature ; if by an 
indolent life ; if by any self-indulgence in 
physical regimen — we render the habit of 
fragmentary prayer impracticable or unnat- 
ural to us, we are crossing the methods of 
G-ooVs working. Something has gone wrong, 
is going wrong, in the life of that Chris- 
tian who finds himself thus estranged from 
filial freedom with God. 

Such a Christian must, sooner or later, be 
brought back to Christ, and must begin life 
anew. He will come back heavy laden and 



104 



THE STILL HOLE. 



in tears. No words express more becom- 
ingly the wail of his spirit, whenever he 
comes to his right mind, than the plaint of 
Cowper — 

( Oh for a closer walk with God ! ' 

In the vestibule of St. Peter's, at Rome, is 
a doorway, which is walled up and marked 
with a cross. It is opened but four times 
in a century. On Christmas Eve. once in 
twenty-five years, the Pope approaches it in 
princely state, with the retinue of cardinals 
in attendance, and begins the demolition of 
the door, by striking it three times with 
a silver hammer. When the passage is 
opened, the multitude pass into the nave 
of the cathedral, and up to the altar, by an 
avenue which the majority of them never 
entered thus before, and never will enter 
thus again. 

Imagine that the way to the Throne of 
Grace were like the Porta Santa, inaccessi- 



THE PORTA SANTA. 



105 



ble, save once in a quarter of a century, 
on the twenty-fifth of December, and then 
only with august solemnities, conducted by 
great dignitaries in a holy city. Conceive 
that it were now ten years since you, or I, 
or any other sinner, had been permitted to 
pray ; and that fifteen long years must 
drag themselves away, before we could ven- 
ture again to approach God ; and that, at 
the most, we could not hope to pray more 
than two or three times in a lifetime ! With 
what solicitude we should wait for the com- 
ing of that Holy Day ! We should lay our 
plans of life, select our homes, build our 
houses, choose our professions, form our 
friendships, with reference to a pilgrimage 
in that twenty-fifth year. We should reck- 
on time by the openings of that Sacred Door, 
as epochs. No other one thought would en- 
gross so much of our lives, or kindle our 
sensibilities so intensely, as the thought of 
Prayer. It would be of more significance 



106 



THE STILL HOUR. 



to us than the thought of Death is now. 
It would multiply our trepidations at the 
thought of dying. Fear would grow to 
horror, at the idea of dying before that 
year of Jubilee. No other question would 
give us such tremors of anxiety as these 
would excite : ' How many years now to 
the time of Prayer ? How many months ? 
How many weeks ? How many days ? 
Shall we live to see it ? Who can tell ? ' 

Yet, on that great Day, amidst an in- 
numerable throng, in a courtly presence, 
within sight and hearing of stately rites, 
what would prayer be worth to us ? Who 
would value it in the comparison with those 
still moments, that — 

' secret silence of the mind/ 

in which we now can 4 find God,' every day 
and every where ? That Day would be more 
like the Day of Judgment to us, than like 
the sweet minutes of converse with ' Our 



ALWAYS WITH GOD. 



107 



Father/ which we may now have, every 
hour. We should appreciate this privilege 
of hourly prayer, if it were once taken from 
us. Should we nof ? 

' Still with Thee, O my God, 

I would desire to be; 
By day, by night, at home, abroad, 
I would be still with Thee 

With Thee amid the crowd 
That throngs the busy mart — 

To hear Thy voice, 'mid clamor louti 
Speak softly to my heart 1 9 



XII. 



THE SPIRIT ALSO HELPETH OUR IXFIRMITIES. 

Rom. 8 : 26. 

Languor may be the penalty of egotism in 
prayer. No other infirmity is so subtle, or 
so corrosive to devotion, as that of an over- 
weening consciousness of self. It is pos- 
sible, that an intense self-conceit should 
flaunt itself in the forms of devoutness. 

To a right-minded man. some of the most 
astonishing passages in the Bible, are the 
mysterious declarations and hints of the 
residence of the Holy Spirit in a human 
soul. We must stand in awe, before any 
just conception of the meaning of such 
voices as these : * The Spirit of God dwell- 
eth in you* ; - God dwelleth in us': * Ye 



INDWELLING OF GOD. 



109 



are the temple of God ' ; ' Your body is the 
temple of the Holy Ghost' ; 6 Full of the 
Holy Ghost ' ; ' Pilled with all the fulness 
of God'; ' Praying in the Holy Ghost'; 
' With all prayer in the Spirit ' ; ' The 
Spirit itself maketh intercession for us.' 

But the mysteriousness of such language 
should not surprise us. Its mystery is only 
the measure of its depth. It is the reality 
which it expresses that is amazing. Let us 
not fritter it away by shallow interpreta- 
tions. While, on the one hand, we are 
under no necessity of blinking the truth 
of the intense activity of the soul in any 
holy experience ; on the other hand, we 
must discern in such phraseology, the greater 
intensity of the Holy Spirit's action in a 
holy mind. The existence of the mind is 
no more a reality, than this indwelling of 
God. 

What then is prayer, as seen in perspective 
with this doctrine of ' the Spirit ' ? Is it 



110 



THE STILL HOUR. 



merely the dialect of helplessness ? Is it 
only, as Paley defines it, the expression of 
want? Is it nothing but the lament of 
poverty, or the moan of suffering, or the 
cry of fear ? Is it simply the trust of weak- 
ness in strength, the leaning of ignorance 
upon wisdom, the dependence of guilt 
upon mercy ? It is all these, but more. 
A holy prayer is the Spirit of God speaking 
through the infirmities of a human soul; 

1 God's breath in man, returning to his "birth. ' 

We scarcely utter hyperbole in saying, that 
prayer is the Divine Mind communing 
with itself, through finite wants, through 
the woes of helplessness, through the cling- 
ing instincts of weakness. On this side of 
the Judgment, no other conception of the 
Presence of God is so profound, as that 
which is realized in our souls every time 
we offer a genuine prayer. God is then 
not only with us, but within us. 



DISHONORING THE SPIRIT. Ill 

That was human nature in honest dismay 
at its own guilt, in which the children of Is- 
rael said to Moses, ' Speak thou with us and 
we will hear ; let not God speak with us, lest 
we die.' That was an adventurous trust- 
fulness, which could enable the Monk of 
Mount St. Agnes to say of this language^ 
'I pray not in this manner; no, Lord, ] 
pray not so ; but with Samuel I entreat, 
" Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth." 
Do Thou, therefore, 0 Lord my God ! speak 
to my soul, lest I die.' But what is the 
sacredness of God's speaking to us, in com- 
parison with the more awful thought of His 
speaking within us ! Yet this is prayer. 
Know ye not that ye are the Temple of 
God? 

It is obvious, then, that the loss of much 
joy in prayer may be attributed to some 
form of dishonor done to the Holy Spirit, 
in either the intent or the manner of our 
devotions. The Spirit sternly refuses to 



112 



THE STILL SOUR. 



become a participant in any act which dis- 
parages Him, and exalts in the heart of the 
worshipper the idea of Self. A profound 
Christian truth may be clothed in the lan- 
guage of a heathen proverb : c A Divine 
Spirit is within us, who treats us as He is 
treated by us.' 

We may offer our supplications, with no 
penetrating sense of the necessity of super- 
natural aid. There may be no childlike 
consciousness of infirmity which should 
lead us to cry out for help. The inspired 
words, often on our lips, may seldom come 
from the depth of our hearts : £ We know 
not what we should pray for as we ought.' 
We make prayer itself one of the standard 
subjects of prayer ; yet, on what theme do 
our devotions more frequently degenerate 
into routine than on this ? Have we a 
sense of indigence when we ask for the 
indwelling of God in our souls ? Have we 
such a sense of need of it, as we have of the 



IRREVERENT PRAYER. 113 



need of air when we are gasping with faint- 
ness ? It is the law of Divine blessing, that 
want comes before wealth, hunger before a 
feast. We must experience the necessity, in 
order to appreciate the reality. 

Have we desires in prayer which we feel 
unable to utter without the aid of God? 
Dr. Payson said, that he pitied the Christian 
who had no longings at the throne of Grace 
which he could not clothe in language. 
There may be a silent disavowal of our 
need of the Holy Ghost, in the very act in 
which we seek His energy. The lips may 
honor Him, but the heart may say : ' What 
have I to do with Thee ? 9 

We may dishonor the Holy Spirit by 
irreverent speech in prayer. The Spirit 
can indite no other than reverent words. 
Where do we find, in the Scriptures, an 
unhallowed familiarity of communion with 
God ? Only at that gathering of the sons 
of God, at which ' Satan came also among 
8 



114 



THE STILL HOUR. 



them/ It required the effrontery of an evil 
spirit, to talk to God as to an equal. 

The consciousness of Divine friendship 
in devotion, so far from being impaired, is 
deepened by holy veneration. The purest 
and most lasting human friendships are 
permeated with an element of reverence ; 
much more this friendship of a man with 
God. Moses, with whom God spoke ' as a 
man with his friend/ was the man who 
said, 'I exceedingly fear and quake. ? Abra- 
ham was called the 'friend of God ; ' yet, 
his favorite posture in prayer was prostra- 
tion. He ' fell on his face, and God talked 
with him.' Do not seraphs cover their faces, 
in any service which approximates to th* 
nature of prayer ? 

' Lowly reverent 
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground, 
With solemn adoration, down they cast 
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold/ 

Even He who could say to His Father, ' j 



IMPATIENT PRAYER. 



115 



know that Thou always nearest me,' we 
are told, ' was heard in that he feared. 9 

What, other than solemn mockery, can 
that devotion be, which clothes itself in pert 
speech ? The heart which is moved in 
healthy pulsations of sympathy w4th the 
promptings of the Holy Ghost, indulges 
in no such gasconade. It is not boisterous 
and rude of tongue, lifting itself up to ' talk 
s&ucily to God.' It is emptied of self, be- 
cause it is filled with the fulness of God. 
Therefore it rejoices with joy unspeakable. 

We may disparage the Holy Spirit by a 
querulous devotion. Self-sufficiency is im- 
patient when it is rebuffed ; scarcely less so 
in intercourse with God, than in intercourse 
with men. Complaint that prayer is not 
answered immediately, or in the specific 
thing we pray for, proves that the Spirit 
has not ' helped our infirmities ' in that 
prayer. We have not sought His aid, nor 
desired it. He prompts only submissive 



116 



THE STILL HOUR. 



petitions, patient desires, a willingness to 
wait on God quietly, and self-forge tfully. 

A Hottentot beats his idol when he fails 
in his supplications. The people of Naples 
are frenzied with rage, when the miracle 
of the ' Liquefaction ' does not appear at 
the festival of San Gennaro. How far is 
that Christian elevated above these, in pos- 
session of the 'fruits of the Spirit,' whose 
heart mutters hard thoughts of God, at the 
delay or the refusal of an answer to his 
prayers ? Such devotion is intensely self- 
ish, however it may be glossed by the re- 
finements of devout speech. 

We may be false to the moving of the 
Holy Spirit, by a diseased inspection of our 
own minds in the act of communion with 
God. Self-examination is a suitable pre- 
liminary, or after-thought, to prayer, but 
is no part of it. Devotion is most thor- 
oughly objective, in respect of the motives 
which induce its presence. It is won into 



EGOTISM IN PRAYER. 



117 



exercise by attractions from without, not 
forced into being by internal commotions. 
It is an outgoing, not a seething of sensi- 
bility. The suppliant looks upward and 
around beyond himself; and devout affec- 
tion grows in intensity with the distance 
which he penetrates, as the eye grows keen 
with far seeing. The Spirit invites to no 
other than such expansive devotion. We 
are never more like Christ, than in prayers 
of intercession. In the most lofty devotion 
we become unconscious of self. 

Joy too, has, from its very nature, the 
same objective origin. It springs from 
fountains out of ourselves. It comes to us ; 
we do not originate it, we do not gain it by 
searching. We are never jubilant in think* 
ing of our joy. Our happiness is an inci- 
dent, of which, as an object of thought, we 
are unconscious. Divine influence is ad- 
justed to this law of our minds ; it seeks 



118 



THE STILL HOUR. 



to bless us by leading us out of self into 
great thoughts of God, 

Hence, one of the most delusive methods 
of crossing the will of the Holy Spirit, is 
that habit of mental introversion in prayer, 
which corresponds to 6 morbid anatomy ' 
in medical science. The heart, instead of 
flowing outward and upward at the bidding 
of the Spirit, turns in upon itself, and 
dissects its own emotions, and studies its 
own symptoms of piety. Any kindlings of 
joy in the soul are quenched, by being made 
the subject of morbid analysise 

6 There are anatomists of piety,' says 
Isaac Taylor, c who destroy all the freshness 
of faith, and hope, and charity, by immur- 
ing themselves, night and day, in the in- 
fected atmosphere of their own bosoms.' 
Andrew Fuller has recorded of himself, 
that he found no permanent relief from 
melancholy, in his early religious life, till 
his heart outgrew the pettiness of his own 



GENEROUS PRAYER. 



119 



sorrows, through his zeal in the work of 
Foreign Missions. We may often be sensi- 
ble, that the ' teachings of the Spirit ' in 
our hearts are of just this character. They 
prompt away from ourselves. 6 Look up, 
look abroad,' is the interpretation of them, 
6 Come away from thyself ; pray for some- 
thing out of thine own soul ; be generous 
in thine intercession ; so shall thy peace be 
as a river/ 

Have you never observed, how entirely 
devoid is the Lord's Prayer of any material 
which can tempt to this subtle self-inspec- 
tion, in the act of devotion ? It is full of 
an outflowing of thought, and of emotion, 
towards great objects of desire, great neces- 
sities, and great perils. ' After this manner, 
therefore, pray ye/ 



XIII. 



WE HAVE AX ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER. 

1 John 2 : 1. 

Christians sometimes offer heathen pray- 
ers. The lifelessness of devotion may often 
be attributable to the want of a cordial recog- 
nition of Christ, as the medium of access to 
the throne of Grace. Prayer, in the Divine 
plan of things, has but one avenue. 6 No 
man cometh unto the Father but by me.' 
Whoever slights Christ in devotion, ' climb- 
eth up some other way.' 

The central idea in the Christian theory 
of prayer, is that of privilege gained by medi 
ation. The language of Christian faith is, 4 1 
am permitted to pray because of the merits 
of another ; I do not deserve to pray, I can- 



TEACHINGS OF NATURE. 



121 



not claim to pray, I have no right to pray, 
but by Christ's permission.' The doctrine 
of prayer, as a doctrine of Nature, is but 
a fragmentary truth. In its fulness, it is 
a Christian peculiarity. The fact of an 
atonement is its foundation. The person 
of a Redeemer is the nucleus of its history. 

One of the grounds on which the neces- 
sity of a Revelation rests, is that, by the 
teachings of Nature, we have no clear right 
to pray — no right which satisfies a guilty 
conscience. Philosophy has often taught 
men that prayer is impiety. To an awak- 
ened conscience, Nature seems to shut man 
in to the solitude of his own forebodings. 
In its dim light, prayer and sacrifice grope 
hand in hand, as the blind leading the blind. 
The right of either to existence is only a 
presumed right. Faith in the efficacy of 
either staggers, whenever the soul is shaken 
by remorse, or philosophy approaches the 
Christian conception of sin. 



122 



THE STILL HOUR. 



Not till Christ is revealed, does prayer 
settle itself as an undoubted fact ; and then 
it is as a privilege only, and as a device 
of mediatorial government. We may pray, 
'•for Christ's sake' This is the Christian 
theory of prayer, and this is the whole of it. 

Xow, it is not difficult to see that one 
may pray, with no adequate appreciation of 
this mediatorial element in the groundwork 
of devotion. A man may habitually pray, 
with no such cordiality of soul towards 
Christ, as is becoming to a suppliant whose 
only right of prayer is a right purchased by 
atoning blood. 

Is it unusual for a Christian mind to be 
thus heedless of Christ in devotion ? Prac- 
tical heresy of this kind may nestle side by 
side with irreproachable orthodoxy. A 
creed and a faith, even upon a truth so 
vital, are, by no means, of necessity one. 
The very soundness of the creed may 
shelter the decay of the faith. We may 



HEATHEN PRAYER. 



123 



6 profess and call ourselves Christians,' and 
yet may every day approach God, as a con- 
verted heathen would, who had never heard 
of Christ. The general mercy of God may 
be the foundation of all the hopefulness, 
all the trust, all the fervor we really feel 
in prayer, while not a thought occurs to 
us of Christ as the ground of that mercy. 
We may pray then, as, perhaps, Socrates 
and Plato prayed. 

We may rejoice to believe that even such 
prayer would have power with God, from 
one who should be ignorant of Redemption. 
The northern Aurora lights up our midnight 
skies with scintillations, emanating from 
magnetic vortices, whose locality and causes 
are otherwise unknown to us. So, we can 
conceive of faith in mercy without a known 
atonement, and in prayer without a revealed 
Saviour, as looming up in radiant twilight, 
and suffusing the heavens with beauty, to 
the eye of a heathen seer, because of the 



124 



THE STILL HOUR. 



secret history of such prayer, in its move 
ment among the mediatorial counsels of 
God. 

But what an Arctic temperature does such 
prayer suggest to one who, in the full me- 
ridian of time, can say, with Simeon : c Mine 
eyes have seen Thy salvation ' ! Such devo- 
tion could do no justice to Christian truth. 
It could be no exponent of Christian privi- 
lege. It is not Christian prayer. 

In the experience of a Christian mind, 
such prayer would involve a conceivable, 
but an impossible distinction, which ex- 
presses, perhaps, as nearly as language 
can describe it, the error of him who 
struggles with such an idea of devotion. It 
is, that one may approach God rather as a 
good man than as a redeemed sinner. This, 
be it repeated, is an unreal distinction in 
any religious life on this globe. Christian 
faith recognizes no other objects of God's 
mercy than redeemed sinners. No others 



DISHONORING CHRIST. 125 



are invited to hold communion with God. 
The invitation is to 6 the world,' only be- 
cause God so loved 6 the world,' that it is a 
redeemed world. That Christian struggles 
against impossibilities, who strives to realize 
in his own experience, any other than the 
joy of a redeemed sinner. 

Yet the human heart is exceedingly tor- 
tuous in its exercises on this theme. I re- 
peat, that a neglect of Christ may lurk in 
our habits of feeling, and may give charac- 
ter to our devotions, when no heresy infects 
the convictions of our intellect. 

A distinguished divine, of the last gener- 
ation, expressed his confidence in the faith 
of a Christian brother, whose soundness as 
a theologian had been questioned ; and he 
gave as his reason, that he had heard that 
brother pray, and that he prayed as if Christ, 
as an atoning Saviour, were a reality to 
him, and that such a man could not be 
essentially heterodox. The principle was 



126 



THE STILL HOUR. 



truthful ; but the converse of it is not so* 
The experience of prayer may be founded 
on no more than Socrates believed, and yet 
the creed of the intellect may be that of the 
Epistle to the Romans. 

We do not need to be taught for the 
enlightenment of our understanding, — but 
do we not need that that Spirit which shall 
not speak of Himself, but shall take of the 
things of Christ and show them unto us, 
should teach our hearts? — that the most 
profound joy in communion with God, must 
centre in an experience of the reality of 
atoning blood. In this one thought, it must 
culminate and rest. 

A divided heart, on this subject, cannot 
know the fulness of the liberty of prayer. 
A heart which is confused in its religious 
life, by a compromise of this truth, cannot. 
Christ, as the Atoning One, must be a 
reality to the soul, or prayer cannot rise to 
its full growth, as an experience of blessed- 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 127 

ness in the friendship of God. For such 
blessedness, we need much of that sense of 
the reality of Christ, which one of the early 
preachers of New England is said to havG 
had upon his death-bed, when, after giving 
his last messages to his earthly friends, he 
turned and said : 6 Where, now, is Jesus of 
Nazareth, my most intimate, most faithful 
friend ? ' 

May we not often solve, with this princi- 
ple, the mystery of God's disciplinary prov- 
idence ? ' Many are the afflictions of the 
righteous;' and ' wherefore,' writes one, 
' but to necessitate the use of prayer as a 
real and efficient means of obtaining assist- 
ance in distress ? ' 4 Lord, in trouble have 
they visited Thee,' says another ; 6 they 
poured out a prayer when Thy chastening 
was upon them.' Often, to deepen our 
knowledge of Christ in prayer, is the mission 
of the angel of sorrow. 

The truth is, that we never feel Christ to 



128 



THE STILL HOUR. 



be a reality, until we feel Him to be a ne* 
cessity. Therefore, God makes us feel that 
necessity. He tries us here, and He tries 
us there. He chastises on this side, and He 
chastises on that side. He probes us by the 
disclosure of one sin, and another, and 
a third, which have lain rankling in our 
deceived hearts. He removes, one after 
another, the objects in which we have been 
seeking the repose of idolatrous affection. 
He afflicts us in ways which we have not 
anticipated. He sends upon us the chas- 
tisements which He knows we shall feel 
most sensitively. He pursues us when we 
would fain flee from His hand ; and, if need 
be, He shakes to pieces the whole framework 
of our plans of life, by which we have been 
struggling to build together the service of 
God and the service of Self; till, at last, 
He makes us feel that Christ is all that is 
left to us. 

When we discover that, and go to Christ, 



CHRIST A REALITY. 



129 



conscious of our beggary in respect of every- 
thing else, — wretched, and miserable, and 
poor ? and blind, and naked, — we go, not 
expecting much, perhaps not asking much. 
There may be hours of prostration when 
we ask only for rest ; we pray for the cessa- 
tion of suffering ; we seek repose from 
conflict with ourselves, and with God's 
providence. But God gives us more. He 
is more generous than we have dared to be- 
lieve. He gives us joy ; He gives us liberty ; 
He gives us victory ; He gives us a sense of 
self-conquest, and of union with Himself in 
an eternal friendship. On the basis of that 
single experience of Christ as a reality, be- 
cause a necessity, there rises an experience 
of blessedness in communion with God, 
which prayer expresses like a Revelation. 
Such devotion is a jubilant Psalm. 
9 



XIV. 



DRAW NIGH TO GOD, AXD HE WILL DRAW NIGH TO 
YOU — James 4: 8, 

God only knows what are the prevailing 
habits of Christians of our own day, respect- 
ing the duties of the closet. On no subject 
is it more necessary to speak with reserve, 
if we would speak justly, of the experience 
of others. Each man knows his own, and 
for the most part, only his own. That is 
not likely to be a truthful or a candid 
severity, which would bring sweeping accu- 
sations against the fidelity of God's people 
in their intercourse with Him. We should 
believe no such charges. They are some- 
times made in a spirit which invites one to 
say to the censorious brother : ' Take heed 
to thyself; Satan hath desired to have thee. 9 



MODERN PRAYERFULNESS. 131 

It cannot reasonably be doubted, that 
multitudes of Christ's followers are strug- 
gling daily to get nearer to God. Perhaps, 
of all the recent treasures of hymnology, 
no other lines have thrilled so many Chris- 
tian hearts, or called forth so deep a throb 
of sympathy as the following, from one of 
our living poets, viz. : 

' Nearer, my God, to Thee, — 

Nearer to Thee ; 
Ev'n though it be a cross 

That raiseth me, 
Still, all my song shall be, 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, — 
Nearer to Thee ! ' 

None are more sensible of their failures 
in* prayer, than those Christians to whom 
these words have become a song of the 
heart, more precious than rubies. Yet such 
Christians are more successful than they 
seem to themselves. 

It cannot be proved that the Modern 
Church — taking into account its numbers, 



132 



THE STILL HOUR. 



the variety of rank, of nation, of tempers 
ment, and of opinion which it embraces, 
the breadth of its Christian character, and 
the energy of its benevolent activities — is 
inferior, in respect of the spirit of prayer, in 
its most scriptural and healthy forms, to the 
Church of any other, even of apostolic : 
times. It is often affirmed, to the discredit 
of the modern developments of piety ; but, 
I repeat, it cannot be proved, nor, in view 
of the aggressive revival of religion which 
seems to be sweeping over Protestant 
Christendom, is it probably true. It is 
not the law of Divine Influence, to bestow 
such measure of power, when and where the 
spirit of prayer is dying out. The law ©i 
procedure, in reference to such grand strides 
of progress, is rather : ' For all this, will i 
be inquired of by the house of Israel/ The 
language of fidelity, then, should not be 
mistaken for the language of suspicion and 
of croaking. 



MODERN ACTIVITY. 



133 



Yet, this doubtless is true, of the tenden- 
cies of our modern Christian life — that 
they embody certain centrifugal forces, as 
related to a life of solitude and stillness. 
Modern piety goes outward, in duties and 
activities, extrinsic to a secret life with 
God. It does this by an inborn instinct, 
which perhaps was never more vigorous in 
its operation than now. This is no evil. 
It is a growth, rather, upon the usage of 
other ages. It is an advance, certainly, 
upon the piety of the cloister and the cowl. 
It is a progress of religious life, too, beyond 
that of the early denominational contentions 
of Protestantism. Those contentions may 
have been a necessary preliminary to it, but 
it is an advance upon the spirit and the 
aims of them. It is a salutary growth. 

But, like every large, rapid growth, it 
involves a peril peculiar to itself — a peril 
which we cannot avoid, but which, by wise 
forethought, we may encounter with safe 



134 



THE STILL HOUR. 



courage. That very obvious peril is, that 
the vitality of holiness may be exhausted 
by inward decay, through the want of an 
increase of its devotional spirit, proportioned 
to the expansion of its active forces. Indi- 
vidual experience may become shallow, for 
the want of meditative habits, and much 
communion with God. 

Should this be the catastrophe of the 
tendencies working in modern Christian 
life, centuries of conflict and corruption 
must follow, by a law fixed like gravitation. 
Our religious organizations must begin soon 
to settle, like a building whose frame is 
eaten through and through with the ' dry- 
rot.' Activity can never sustain itself. 
Withdraw the vital force which animates 
and propels it, and it falls like a dead arm. 
We cannot, then, too keenly feel, each one 
for himself, that a still and secret life with 
God must energize all holy duty, as vigor 



THOLIJCK. 



135 



in every fibre of the body must come from 
the strong, calm, faithful beat of the heart. 

To one who is conscious of defect in his 
own piety, respecting the friendship of the 
soul with God, there will be great apt- 
ness and beauty in the appeal of a foreign 
preacher : ' Why fleest thou from solitude ? 
Why dost thou shun the lonely hour ? 
Why passe th thy life away, like the feast 
of the drunkard ? Why is it, that to many 
of you there cometh not, through the whole 
course of the week, a single hour for self- 
meditation ? You go through life like 
dreaming men. Ever among mankind, 
and never with yourselves. * * * You 
have torn down the cloister, but why have 
you not erected it within your own hearts ? 
Lo, my brother, if thou wouldst seek out 
the still hour, only a single one every day, 
and if thou wouldst meditate on the love 
which called thee into being, which hath 
overshadowed thee all the days of thy life 



136 



THE STILL HOUR. 



with blessing, or else by mournful experk 
ences hath admonished and corrected thee ; 
this would be to draw near to thy God. 
Thus wouldst thou take Him by the hand. 
But whenever, in ceaseless dissipation of 
heart, thou goest astray, the sea of the 
Divine blessing shall surround thee on all 
sides, and yet thy soul shall be athirst. 
Wilt thou draw near to God ? * * * Then 
seek the still hour.' 



XV. 



FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR. 

HEB. 11 : 1. 

When the first edition of this manual 
was published, thirty years ago, a Christian 
lady in New York criticised it with some 
severity. The object of her animadver- 
sions was its general tone of reproof. She 
thought the book itself was too severe. Its 
theory of the nature of prayer was keyed 
on too lofty a model for the vast majority 
of praying men and women. She affirmed 
that it represented prayer as too difficult a 
duty for the average experience, even for 
the average abilities of believers. It was 
deficient in good cheer. It was not help- 
ful to the despondent suppliant. It laid a 



135 



THE STILL HOUPw. 



burden on disconsolate consciences. The 
intellectual strain of prayer was made too 
intense for the needs of the young, the 
sick, the dying, and those of infirm minds. 
Coleridge's ideal of the duty — that in its 
perfection it taxed the most exalted pow- 
ers of the human mind — pervaded its 
pages as the duty and the aim of all minds. 

The author did not then feel the force 
of the criticisms ; nor does he now concede 
their justice as bearing on the habits of the 
great majority of professing Christians. 
The book was designed to be a force of 
awakening to an underrated and neglected 
duty. This it has proved to be to the 
large majority of those readers for whom 
it was written. The infirmities of prayer 
which are here considered are felt by those 
who are conscious of them to be just occa- 
sion for self-reproach. They mourn over 
them in secret places. We all seek for 
giveness for them as sins. 



THE SPONTANEITY OF PRAYER. 139 

The circulation of this volume is proof 
that in the respect now named, it has 
met the conscious conditon of immense 
numbers of the children of God. 

Yet time has convinced me that there is 
truth in my friend's criticism. The re- 
ligious life of many praying men is clouded 
by the absence of a more profound sense 
than they have of the spontaneity of prayer, 
to which they are welcomed by the loving 
heart of Christ. The sense of privilege is 
weighed down by the sense of duty. The 
afflicted believer prays without the spring 
of an elastic faith. His labored utterances 
are a toil to him because he does not con- 
ceive of any ideal of prayer which is other 
than a toil. The vociferation so common 
in uncultivated minds when engaged in 
audible devotion is a sign of the toilsome 
process in which the mind is engaged. 
Such believers do not enjoy prayer be- 
cause no idea of prayer has become habit- 



140 



THE STILL HOUR. 



ual with them which they can enjoy. A 
devout suppliant may be eager to pray 
with no adequate conception of God's 
eagerness to hear. He has no vision of a 
God bending with attentive ear to lisping 
speech and tremulous tones and intermit- 
tent cries. His faith does not realize to 
his imagination the presence of the Holy 
Spirit as a Help to speechless infirmities. 
Prayer under such conditions is necessarily 
a lame and halting service. 

How then shall this acknowledged in- 
firmity be removed ? 

By living in a state of faith. All con- 
scious defects in Christian character are 
relieved by acts of faith. When these 
become continuous, so as to constitute a 
living state of faith, infirmities vanish. 
When faith is even the result of sponta- 
neous will power the relief is none the less 
real. Take God then at His word ; believe 
His promises ; accept His assurances. 



THE SAVIOUR'S PROMISES. 141 



Turn with trustful eye to that chapter 
which has perhaps given more comfort to 
disconsolate believers than any other — 
the fourteenth of St. John. Our Lord 
says : 

" Let not your heart be troubled." Be- 
lieve it. He declared, " I go to prepare 
a place for you." Believe it. " Whatso- 
ever ye shall ask in my name, that will I 
do." Believe it. " I will pray the Father 
and He shall give you another Comforter." 
Believe it. " Peace I leave you. My 
peace I give unto you." Believe it. " Let 
not your heart be troubled, neither let it 
be afraid." Believe it all. 

Turn then to the twin chapter in the 
history of Christian joy — the seventeenth 
of St. John. How little have we under- 
stood the force of the fact that believers 
are the subjects of our Lord's elective in- 
tercession. He has chosen us before the 
worlds were made. 



142 



THE STILL HOUR. 



These words spake Jesus : "Father, the 
hour is come ; glorify thy Son — that He 
should give eternal life to as many as 
Thou hast given Him. I pray for them : 
I pray not for the world, but for them 
which Thou hast given me. . Holy Father, 
keep through thine own name those whom 
Thou hast given me." " Those that Thou 
gavest mo I have kept, and none of them is 
lost." " These things I speak that they 
may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." 
Believe these words of infinite and myste- 
rious promise. Take them to heart. Let 
heart-strings infold and cling to them. 
Appropriate them as a special and peculiar 
treasure. Let them form a hidden life 
with God. A believer's inner life is one 
grand series of promises and responses. 
An amber-colored chain of gladness links 
them all together. To be a glad Christian 
one must believe in the reality of a Chris- 
tian gladness. He must take what God 



A LIVING FAITH. 



143 



gives. It is a grandly simple thing, like 
the undulations of Light which illumine 
the universe forever. Such is the fruit of 
a state of living faith. 



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